Echoes
by antepathy
Summary: Short backstories on individual characters from my other, longer fics. Early days of war on Cybertron. In one place for your convenience! Sideswipe, Barricade, Megatron, Ironhide thus far. Rating bumped for sexual content and language.
1. Shattered Sun

When I'm writing a new character and really want to get to know them, I write a short bit about their backstory, hoping to find out more about their personality and their voice. This also gives stuff I can then refer back to in the story itself to make it 'richer' in time. It's a cheap trick, but hey, you're reading for free, right? :P

I'm swiping this idea of character backstories/sidestories for a fic from Starseeded.

After this I have ones for Megatron, Barricade, Ironhide and Flareup coming up. And then…who knows? I hope you keep checking in!

A bit of a spoiler for _Fallout_—Sideswipe's in it. Here's some backstory on him. I took the notion of Sideswipe/Sunstreaker being 'twins' and decided, just because Hasbro can't stop me, to make them a Binary—like Seeker Trines, but only two of them.

I struggle with Autobots. In a lot of fics they come across as undifferentiated, vanilla good guys. There are only so many spins you can put on 'honorable' and 'decent' and 'noble' and 'good', right? And I know Autobot fans really resent poor characterizations of their faves, so I'm a little…afraid of the Wrath of the Autobot Fans on this one. I was trying to account for two things: why, in the Bayverse, Sideswipe is there without Sunstreaker (gasp!! Blasphemy!) and his G1 character—he ignores orders, is a friendly sort of 'jock' type, so…well, we'll see if it passes muster. Let me know!

**Repair Bay**

**Iacon**

_Sideswipe fidgeted with the bandages on his hands. He hated sitting still. More than that, he hated listening to the depressing, slow, rhythmic sounds, beeps and hisses, the soft hum of the freon cooling system. Sunstreaker, he thought, looking at the blobby lump of the CR pod. This isn't you. This mass of brushed steel, all these blue and yellow lights, blinking without pattern, all of these incomprehensible readouts. Sunstreaker was…alive. And vibrant and colorful and loud and oh, so fraggin' easy to read even Sideswipe understood him. _

_Part of his cortex felt numb, but Sideswipe couldn't tell if that was some sort of symptom (denial) of reality or some rogue sensation carried along his Binary link. He wished for the bajillionth time that they weren't the only Binary in the Autobot forces. So much unknown about them. He wished, wildly, frantically, for a Seeker to ask. They know how these links worked. They probably had ways of helping each other, communicating through this link. All he and Sunstreaker had ever gotten to was sensing each other's mood. _

_Part of him wanted to dash back out to the battlefield and stay there blowing stuff up until he could find a Seeker, and beat out of him what he wanted to know. Would feel good. It would get it out of his system. He'd be MOVING. DOING. Helping. Somehow. Instead of…just sitting here. Snivelling. _

_Thinking. _

_Sideswipe hated thinking. Planning, that was one thing. But just sitting here, his processor running back over the events of the last few cycles—once was enough. _

_Once was more than enough. And he had done it twice._

*****

Ten cycles earlier….

**Mission Loading Ramp Gamma**

**Iacon**

"Ha!" Sideswipe said, punching his Binary in the shoulder, "Think you can take me, huh?" They were waiting for their chance to load onto the air-assault vehicle for the latest attack in Parviid Sector. The Decepticons had been making noise at the border, and word had come down to push them back hard enough they thought twice about running into this wall again. When you wanted 'push back hard', the Binary was your team. Of course, Sideswipe thought, it was always good to have others around. He didn't think he could take on the ENTIRE Decepticon army all by himself. Not…yet.

"_Think_ I can?" Sunstreaker tossed his head back, the light glittering off the gold patterns in his armor. He rubbed where Sideswipe had punched him, self-consciously. Not because it hurt, but checking to see that Sideswipe hadn't scratched his paint. "I can beat you flat out in anything you name, AND look twice as good doing it."

Sideswipe cocked his head to one side. "We'll just see about that, now, won't we?" He rolled his shoulders in their sockets, eagerly. "How shall we score this one? Most kills, most offlines, most dramatic takedown?"

"Tell you what? We'll run our battle stats together afterwards. You can pick your best and try to match mine." He grinned, knowing the condescension would make Sideswipe's mouth purse, just that way. This, Sideswipe thought, was the best. A little brotherly competition. They had always pushed each other. Always competed. And yet…were always happy whoever won. A lot of the other Autobots didn't understand that part—thought that competition was 'unhealthy' and 'bound to cause a rift'. They didn't know. Sideswipe and his brother were the only Binary they'd ever seen.

Not their fault, but they just didn't know.

"You're so on."

*****

**Parviid Sector**

Sideswipe skated along the rubble-strewn street, bent low over his cargo. Get it there and get back, he told himself. One of the flank teams had lost its medic, and with him, all the medical supplies, including a medevac beacon. The mission commander Red Alert had comm'd him for the job. Well, Sideswipe admitted, he was fast, and so a natural choice. And a heroic rescue was a good thing. Still, he hated to be taken out of the battle while the battle was still raging.

And while Sunstreaker was still fighting.

He'd better not be jacking his battle stats, Sideswipe muttered, as he curved his path around a gutted personnel carrier. He checked the coordinates. Almost there. Almost on top of them.

He skidded to a halt, looking around. Nothing but blasted buildings, broken plasglass, the feathery chips of building siding floating in the air, muffling the sounds of battle, which seemed further away than they really were.

He whirled, hearing a sound. A metallic hand poked from a blown out store-window, beckoning him. Could be a trap. He bared his energon blades. If they were friendlies, they'd forgive his bad manners. If they weren't friendlies, well, they wouldn't live long enough to form much of an opinion at all. He wheeled closer.

Autobots. He breathed a sigh of relief at spotting the insignias. He'd been warned before that 'cons had magnetic 'cheat' insignias they'd throw on over their own, but these weren't magnets. Battle damage and smoke-score half obscured some of them.

He grinned, ducking into the building. "Here you go!" he handed them the pack. "Where's the action, anyway?" Seemed weird he'd made it all the way here only ducking a few random wingshots.

"Up ahead. He's too injured to move," the patrol leader gestured to a bot prone on the floor, his eyes flickering dimly. A bad rainbow of fluids pooled under him. One of the other bots got to work immediately, digging in the pack Sideswipe had brought, yanking out hose clamps, emergency fluid canisters and the like.

"Awright, but what about the rest of you?" Sideswipe looked around at the six or seven bots around the walls of the room. "Look fight-ready to me."

"Look," the patrol leader said, "They've been through a lot. They're resting."

"What? You rest when it's OVER, mechs. Not in the middle. You rest too long you're going to rest yourself offline when the 'cons overrun this place." That shot a bit of fear into them. What was wrong with this new crop of Autobots? Didn't seem to have the proper spirit at all. He'd heard Ironhide remonstrating with Prime about the so-called New Army recruits—that their hearts weren't in it, that they worried too much about themselves and not enough about anything large than themselves, that they were soft. He'd just thought it was Ironhide being..well, Ironhide. Maybe not. That mech knew a thing or three about war.

"Phuh," Sideswipe said. "I'm going. Any of you mechs think you actually deserve that insignia you wear, you can follow me." He rolled outside and waited.

Three of the mechs clambered out, slowly, shooting more than one wistful or worried look back at the relative safety of the blasted-out shop. But they came. There was hope for them. Sideswipe grinned. "Gonna teach you how to be real fighters, mechs," he said, happily. He listened for the sound of firing. "This way!"

*****

The three who had come with him were able enough when he set them loose on the front line. They worked decently as a team, moving smoothly under fire, and made good weapons choices for each target. Sideswipe grunted in satisfaction. Since their arrival, the 'con assault had lost momentum. All that had to happen now was to push them back. Unrealistic to imagine all the way back to Kaon, but…a mech can dream, can't he?

Around him the battle raged for sectors. Above the usual pops of small arms fire, and the larger whoomps of mortars, and the soft hiss of energon weapons and pulse rifles, one loud crack, far off to his left, seemed to shatter the sky. The whole battle seemed to stagger at the sound, weapons falling off rhythm.

Sideswipe got a sick feeling. A sick feeling that swelled, moments later, when Red Alert hit his comm. "Sideswipe, location," Red Alert said, brusquely.

"Sector you sent me, helping out. Why?"

"Orders were to come back immediately."

Orders. Huh. Stupid things. Old and slow and completely unaware of how useless they are. Battle changed too fast, too much, for orders to be precise beyond—win. "They needed my help!"

"We need you here. There's been an…accident."

"Sunstreaker!?"

"Just get back here."

Sideswipe cursed. He turned to his mechs. "Keep this up. I've got to get back." They looked at each other worriedly. Without his leadership, he too worried about them. Better they stay and fight than go scurrying back to that coward's hole. He had no time for that now: Sunstreaker. He nodded, trying to look hard and stern and give them the message that he'd kick their afts if he heard of any cowardice, and dashed off.

*****

Sideswipe was furious. "You dragged me all the way back here, from where I was doing some fraggin' GOOD, and he's okay?!" Okay, it was really a mix of fury and relief. Thank Primus Sunstreaker was okay. The dark thoughts that had been filling his mind as he raced his way back from the right flank, too preoccupied to even shoot back at the random and ineffective snipers, were bad enough. It felt like a weight lifted from his cortex.

"He's not 'okay'," First Aid said. "He's awake and responsive. The battle is over for him." He glared down at Sunstreaker to reinforce the point.

That also wasn't exactly bad news. Ha! I'll win this one, Sideswipe thought. All that 'twice as good and twice as pretty' stuff? See where it got him? And then, again, thank Primus he's okay. "You can fix him, right?"

"Of course," First Aid looked mildly offended. "It will just take time. He needs to take it easy now, though. That blast caught him in the head. We've had to remove some of his back helm-plating to relieve pressure on his cortex. It's…not pretty to look at, but it's a temporary fix until we can get him back to some good machining."

Yeah yeah. All Sideswipe really heard, all he wanted to hear, was that Sunstreaker would be fine. Message received. And a bunch of other medical gobbledygook. "Right," he said. "You better take care of him." First Aid rolled his eyes. "I've got a battle to win." Sideswipe patted his Bine's arm as he lay on the repair frame. "We'll win it for you, Sunstreaker."

"Heh," Sunstreaker muttered, the words coming muzzily through the sensor block he was under. "Just be finishing what I started." The two grinned at each other.

*****

Winning the battle was going to be a little more difficult than Sideswipe had anticipated. Damn 'cons were everywhere. And that big explosion had been a controlled neutrino burst—the center of the line of battle now had a giant hole both sides were eager to claim blown in it. The only problem is…fighting in a damn hole. Not as easy as it looked. Though Sideswipe made, he thought, everything look easy.

He ducked behind a pile of slagged rubble. He couldn't even tell what it had originally been before the 'con's latest weapon had rearranged its chemistry. Shots zinged over his head, one or two thumping against his cover. He had a standard pulse rifle, but he hated those. Much more a close-in guy. Let them really see it coming. All this 'round with your name on it and no return address' stuff was just not Sideswipe's style.

He reached for one of his own grenades and lobbed it over, grinning at the satisfying explosion and the sudden cut-off of the shots aiming at him. Either got him or gave him some serious second-thoughts. Knowing 'cons, though, they weren't much for _first_ thoughts so….

Sideswipe rose up and dashed across the lines toward the enemy, ducking into smaller craters pocking the large neutrino-hole for cover. He'd almost made it when it seemed the entire damn 'con army opened up on his position. He dove into the nearest crater, his wheels slipping in a ghastly mix of spilled fluids, bumping against the bodies of the fallen. This was…not good. He crouched, determined. He'd figure a way out of this. He wasn't under any illusion of himself as a genius, but there was one thing he knew, and that was fighting. His brains and his luck: he'd be fine. Just had to have patience. Till an idea came. Till the situation changed and he could take advantage of it.

Nearly half a cycle later, the fire slackened. He risked a peek—he'd gotten so turned around he'd forgotten which way was forward. And for his curiosity, he got a sniper round, caustic, through the shoulder. He flopped back, landing headfirst toward the bottom of the crater, his head floating in the mixed goop of the dead.

Slag, he swore, feeling his own fluids join the pool and the caustic chemicals of the round eating into his wiring.

Red Alert hit his comm again. Primus DAMMIT! Couldn't call at a more incon-fraggin'-venient time, could he?

"WHAT?" Sideswipe struggled upward. His top heavy frame, and the slipperiness of the goop, made this more of a challenge than he wanted at the moment.

"Where are you?"

"In a fraggin' hole in the ground." Did Red Alert really have nothing better to do than constantly call his warriors and ask where they were? Answer was pretty fraggin' self-evident, wasn't it? Where am I? Fighting your fraggin' battle.

"We need you at this location," he rattled a string of digits.

"I can't right now. Kind of pinned down."

"If you're where you should be according to the OPLAN…."

Oh don't start with me. Don't start with fraggin' orders. Sideswipe simply growled into his comm. The pain from his wound was really starting to eat away at his patience. Not that he had any great supply of that to begin with.

Red Alert paused. Then, "We'll have a talk about this later." He cut comm.

Damn right we'll talk about this later, Sideswipe snapped. Soon as I get out of here. Soon as I get the frag UP.

*****

A half-cycle later, Sideswipe was still pinned down. But he was feeling cheerful. He finally had a plan. And the means to carry it out. He'd sorted through the equipment of the offlined mechs. Some of their weaponry had been altered by the neutrino burst, but some of it was still functional. He'd scored a few dozen concussion grenades, a handful of high explosive, and, best of all, an EMP rifle. The thing that had pulled his plan together was the discovery of some detonation cord in one of the mechs' storage compartments. Sure, it felt a little…ooky to be pawing through a dead mech's pockets, and he didn't like some of the stuff he found there—little trinkets and mementos and good luck charms that obviously hadn't worked—but, well, they were _dead_ and he was not. He was pretty sure they'd forgive him. Well, the Autobots would. And who cared about the dead 'cons and their feelings anyway?

He'd petal-chained the concussion grenades together into three long bola-like bombs, and then strung the HE's along yards and yards of det cord, throwing them far away as he could, so there was a long line of HE grenades linked in sequence. He set off a loose grenade and threw it right in front of his position—a little diversion. When it burst, he rose up and lobbed the first of his bolas at the enemy lines. A satisfying explosiong, then a gratifying pause in the weapons fire aimed at one poor little Binary.

He looked around once more before setting them off and getting the frag out of this sorry pit when he heard the roar of an approaching unit. From the Autobot lines.

Mechs dashed around his hole, screaming as they tore across the open no-mech's-land toward the Decepticon lines. One shape wheeled to a stop at the hole's rim. "Got a feeling you could use a little old-fashioned rescuing." Sunstreaker grinned down at him.

"I don't need your fraggin' help!" Sideswipe clawed up the side of the crater, waving the tangled ends of the det cord. "I had it under control!"

"Riiiiight. Face it, you just don't want to think about how much better this makes me look." Sunstreaker rested his hands on his hips as if there weren't a battle going on around them. Sure that he wouldn't get hit. Unafraid. Even now with that plate still missing from the back of his head. Show no fear to the enemy. Sideswipe hated to admit it, but he was impressed.

Then again, Sunstreaker was his Bine. They were alike in so many ways. He'd probably have done the same thing. Meant they were both idiots.

Sideswipe burned—a few more kliks and he'd've done it all himself, but right now, there was a battle and it didn't seem to be going well for the Autobots. Like the tide going out, the same mechs—though fewer—who had rolled or run boldly toward the enemy lines were tearing back, to a brilliant and renewed display of Decepticon firepower.

"Fine," Sideswipe muttered, "Let's get the frag out of here." He grabbed Sunstreaker by the arm, and joined the dash back to safer ground.

Sunstreaker turned his head to make some wiseass comment—Sideswipe could see the cheeky smile already on his face—when the round caught him in the back of the head. Right in the missing helmplate. Whatever Sunstreaker was planning to say came out as "Gaaaaaah." He dropped forward, onto his knees.

Sideswipe whirled, covering them with his weapon, eyes flying side to side to find some decent cover. He spotted a low mound of slagged metal—probably originally a steel wall. That would do. He reached down for Sunstreaker. "C'mon."

Sunstreaker jerked up, his eyes wild. Twitching back from Sideswipe, he jerked his own weapon up and began firing wildly—at Sideswipe; at the 'cons, still safe in their positions; at his own retreating team.

"Sunstreaker!" Sideswipe yelped, diving behind a low piece of stone, the steel mound forgotten. "What the frag!?"

Sunstreaker made some horrible screeching blurt of noise in response, continuing to wheel around, firing at anything that moved. It was when he had turned his back to Sideswipe that Sideswipe saw it—the fitful sparking from the new hole punched in his helm. Sunstreaker's unarmored processor had been hit.

The Autobots rallied behind some cover, and began returning fire. At Sunstreaker. "NO!" Sideswipe howled. When that didn't work, he hit them over comm, yelling again, as if cursing and volume would somehow get through to them.

"Sir, he's firing on us! You don't expect us to take it?"

Sideswipe ducked as Sunstreaker whirled around to fire off another handful of shots at him. "No, but don't fraggin' hit him!"

"What else are we supposed to do?" Dammit, the mech had a point.

Sideswipe felt a little queasy. "I'll do it." He looked at the EMP rifle in his hand. "Forgive me, Sunstreaker." Least he could do, though, was not shoot his Bine in the back. He waited until Sunstreaker had turned again, picked his shot, and fired.

*****

**Repair Bay**

**Iacon**

First Aid was getting a little tired of Sideswipe hanging over him. Sideswipe could tell. Well, there was an easy enough way to fix that: FIX SUNSTREAKER. Duh.

First Aid laid his tools down, irritated. He looked up at Sideswipe. "_Can_ you go away?"

"Yeah, I can. Not going to, though."

"You can't help him." First Aid bent back over Sunstreaker's exposed cortex, a magnifier and a plasma scalpel in his hands.

You don't know that, Sideswipe thought, glaring at the medic. He could feel Sunstreaker, along his Binary link. Some turgid mix of confusion and frustration and rage. He looked offline, his eyes recharge-dim, but Sideswipe could feel him. He cursed that they had no one to ask. Everyone knew the stories, of course, about the Seekers, and how they could communicate along their links, and more. Exchange energy. Move as one. Teleport. Myths, they had been told. But what if they weren't? What if there was a way that Sideswipe could reach in and help Sunstreaker? He felt for the Bine link, but it seemed to evade him like trying to catch smoke in his hands. Sunstreaker, he called. Come on. I'll even let you win. Deadly injury trumps everything. But only as long as you wake up to claim the prize.

He pushed these thoughts urgently at Sunstreaker. Was it his imagination or did Sunstreaker's eyes seem to flicker? Come on, he thought, encouragingly.

First Aid sat back again. He turned to a smaller mech. "Let's try it now." The smaller mech nodded, and hit some switch. Sideswipe jumped as Sunstreaker's optics came back online. Sideswipe grinned—he'd be the first thing Sunstreaker would see.

He saw the blue eyes glow, flick in recognition and then, just as he was about to say something, the optics darkened, spiralling in to nearly pinpoints. With a roar Sunstreaker tore up out of the repair frame. He swung one arm wide, and First Aid's tray of tools went flying. The tray clanged to the floor surrounded by a ring of silence. First Aid looked stunned. Sideswipe's welcoming smile was slowly melting off his face. And Sunstreaker—his gold face was a blank snarl.

He lunged at Sideswipe, who barely managed to dive out of the way. What the frag? "Sunstreaker!" he yelled, feeling a sick sense of déjà vu. "It's me!"

Sunstreaker got up and swung again for Sideswipe, falling only because one of his legs tangled in auxiliary power cables. Sideswipe ducked again, shooting a panicked glance at First Aid. "What the frag's going on?"

First Aid had backpedaled against a tool cart. "I don't know! There must be some micro-shrapnel or something still in his cortex."

Some great fraggin' doctor you are, Sideswipe thought. But right now, he had other concerns. "Sunstreaker," Sideswipe called out, both out loud and trying, desperately, across the Binary link. All he felt in return was an agonizing burn, as if someone had poured acid on his cortex. Sideswipe staggered back under it, clutching his head. Sunstreaker whirled away from Sideswipe, setting his gaze on the nearest occupied repair frame. The mech in it was out cold under heavy sensor block. He didn't see Sunstreaker coming. Didn't see Sunstreaker's large energon sword form itself above him. Didn't see the blade puncture his spark chamber.

Sideswipe saw it. He saw it all. Burned into his cortex. Burning.

Sunstreaker…had to be stopped.

Sunstreaker turned again, his eyes lighting on the small mech who had been assisting First Aid. First Aid might not have a reputation as a fighter, but Sideswipe gave him credit when he saw the medic flick on a reciprocating saw and slice into Sunstreaker's arm, cutting the servos that let him grip the sword. Not the smartest move, but it took some gyros. "Get away from him," First Aid yelled over the whine of the saw. Sunstreaker sent him backward with one blow. The saw flew from First Aid's grip, power guttering out as it was jerked from its power coupling. Sunstreaker's energon sword skittered across the floor under a repair frame.

Sunstreaker looked down the repair bay. Sideswipe looked too, and for a moment it was almost like he was seeing through Sunstreaker's eyes. All those…enemies. All those threats. Waiting to be neutralized.

Sunstreaker has to be stopped. I'm the only one who can.

He jumped into action, sprinting after Sunstreaker, recoiling in horror as Sunstreaker punched a hole, bodily, through another injured mech. The fluids seemed to rise in slow motion, like a crown of colored crystal that tore itself into droplets reaching for the sky. With that second mech's death, any doubt Sideswipe had got erased from his mind. He drew his twin blades and…it was all he could do NOT to think about what he was about to do…skate up behind his brother in a swinging attack arc…and….

…slice through the exposed power core line in Sunstreaker's neck.

He turned away, trying desperately not to see Sunstreaker's body jerk once. Again. Sparks showering from the gash in his neck, igniting fluids, running down his twitching body. Don't look, he told himself. He's already dead. Motor reflex. Nothing more.

He felt the Bine link burn in him like a thousand suns. Hot. Searing. Taking his sight away. Filling him only with white hot pain.

He shattered his blades against each other, and succumbed to the white heat.

*****

_Sideswipe sat, listening to the clicks and hums and beeps of the CR pod. Sunstreaker, he thought. Was that a message? Or was that our Bine link dying? Were you telling me you were all right? Are you still there? Is this our link or is this my imagination? Wishful thinking? _

_If I had a wish, it would be I didn't come out of…whatever that was. First Aid called it a seizure brought on by stress and exhaustion. A sort of cortical fritz from too much static on the line. Was it? Or were you trying to tell me something—something I'm too stupid to get? Or were you trying to take me with you? I wish you had tried, just a little bit harder. Then I wouldn't have to be here. And you…here too. _

"_Sunstreaker," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." He placed a bandaged hand on the CR chamber, and pulled back, feeling ridiculous. Stupid hunk of metal and refrigerant. First Aid had told him that Sunstreaker could be repaired. Just…not with their current technology. As good as dead. For as good as forever. _

_He heard a footfall. Another medic come to check the levels on the CR chamber, probably. Nope. Seems even his illimitable luck ran out: Red Alert. His cortex told him, dully, that he should stand for a superior officer. He didn't care. He remained hunched over his knees, on the floor beside the pod. Bits of crystalline energon still pocked his forearms from when he'd shattered his blades in despair. They caught the light like hard tears. "Sideswipe," Red Alert said, gruffly. His eyes kept shooting to the pod. "First Aid has put you in for a commendation. For saving the ward."_

_Commendation. Frag. For killing his brother. For killing part of himself. "Don't want it."_

"_I figured not. But you did," Red Alert's voice cracked for a second. "…you did a brave thing."_

_It was a horrible thing. Like an amputation. Of the better part of himself. "It had to be done," he said, dully. _

"_Uh…yes. Look. We understand if you need some time, alone, to deal with this." Red Alert shifted on his feet, uncomfortable._

_"Alone." Sideswipe held the word in the air, so they could both look at it and study its meaning. Binary sundered. Sideswipe alone, truly, truly alone, for the first time in his life. He looked at his hands again—hands that had killed his own Binary. Primus, they didn't understand. Even now, they didn't understand._

_But it wasn't their fault that they didn't understand. They did their best. They tried their hardest. And, as Sideswipe had just learned, sometimes even that wasn't…wasn't fraggin' good enough. _

_They certainly didn't deserve to feel guilty for this. No. That was all Sideswipe's. Not their fault, not their burden. _

_A thin plan coalesced in his cortex: one day he'd find a way. He could lift the terrible weight of this guilt by saving his Binary. He knew there had to be a way. He knew it. He'd find a Seeker, and learn a way. Or he'd do it on his own, sitting here by the pod, reaching with his Binary link until he could actually do something. It would be hard, but Sideswipe wasn't a mech put off by a little difficulty. Ha! He thought. Saving your sorry aft from death, Sunstreaker. Top that one. _

"_Nah," he said, looking up at Red Alert. "I'm fine. Be fine. As long as I get to kick some 'con." He managed a smile, but it wasn't his smile: this was cold and hard-edged. Like the blades he had ruined. And though his voice was light and confident, his eyes, when they caught Red Alert's, had shadows. _


	2. Barricade: Control Act 1

_A/N The following is a bit of Barricade's backstory. Sorry, I could do NOTHING with 'Race Track Patrol' connecting him to Intelligence work, so I kinda chucked canon out the window here. (But you'll eventually spot those Micromaster cameos!) SO, here's NEW backstory. Barricade, in this, is WAY younger than you think. Early days of the war on Cybertron. This section, which is HUGE for something I write, is Act One. And is about a third of the wordcount of the story. Just…tryin' something different. Five sections total. _

1.

"Good cycle, gentle warbots," he began his usual patter, not even bothering to listen to himself any more, "My designation is Combat Control 26G643AB, personal designation Barricade, and I'll be your CC for the upcoming mayhem."

He heard the six bots in his team grumble. Everyone hated CC. Hated CC til CC saved their sorry asses. And even then some. "My mission success rate is 92%, currently the highest in Combat Control. My casualty rate is average, roughly 54.2%. My fatality rate is among the lowest, at only 18%. To prepare you for what's ahead: statistically, you will succeed. You will most likely get hit. But you will survive. I shall now give you 30 kliks to verify the statistics I have just given you. If you think you can do better on your own, please feel free to close down your channel. That will increase the likelihood of non-casualty for the others by approximately 4% each."

He waited. One of them checked of course. One of them always checked. "He is that good," he heard one say, almost angry. As if he wished his CC were incompetent and a liar. Because, yeah, that made sense.

He waited. "No objections? Fine. Please log your numeric mission designations. You," he pinged one, "Are now One. You, are Two," and so on down through the six of them. One, Number One, in fact, inevitably complained. "Why don't you use our real designations?"

"Because it takes less time to say your number than your polysyllabic name," Barricade replied, curtly. Also, because he didn't really like to think about these bots as individuals with names. When a number died, who cared? When a bot with an actual name died, that implied that a history, a personality, likes and dislikes, died with it. No thanks. "You may of course refer to me as CC or more likely, 'you'. 'Your highness, savior of my skin plating' would be appreciated, but I bow to circumstance." One snort of laughter. Barricade logged that—number Four. Keep him alive, he decided. "If this is unacceptable to you, hang onto your individuality by all means. And close your channel." Another pause. No one did. Very rarely did anyone. Not when they saw his stats. He could be the biggest fraggin' bastard, but the numbers paid for a lot of nipped pride.

"Our mission is to assault a warehouse from where we believe a small faction of counterinsurgent Autobots who have lately been launching…unpleasantness. Likelihood of explosives judging from their usual methods, near 100%. Likelihood they will use them in a combat situation, also high. I have taken the liberty—I presume you don't mind—of mapping the most expedient areas for them to lay explosives and traps. I will download each floorplan as it becomes relevant. Any questions so far?"

Two and Five muttered. Barricade didn't care enough to call up their voc volumes. Sometimes it was fun to change their vol settings and have them blast out what they thought was a mutter or whisper. They hadn't pissed him off quite enough. Yet.

"If you're still onboard, please lower quaternary firewalls to allow CC access to your systems." One by one, they let him in—their armament specs, stats, alt modes and abilities, and current readiness scrolling across the screens in the large CC helmet. All six. Of course, he preened. Your reputation precedes you. "Good. I have you all. The transport will drop you in half a cycle. I will leave you to your thoughts, gentlemen, and pick up with you when you hit the CZ."

*****

Barricade slumped back in the harness, feeling the cables from the CC helmet slide over his head and shoulders as he rolled his head around to loosen up his neck. Bad part hadn't even begun yet and he was already getting tense. Do not borrow stress from the future, you idiot, he told himself. Doesn't spread it any thinner on the ground. Can't do your job worth spilled oil if you tweak yourself.

He glossed his primary visor, rolling its optical control to scan the CC center. Only three other CCs working right now. Slow optempo. He wondered why he only had a six-team for this one. Not that he minded—fewer idiots to have to corral against their better instincts. He recognized Fray's hands, frantically operating the virtual screens. Hot action there. Barricade figured he'd look like that in about half a cycle: they didn't waste their 'best' CC on any milk runs.

He called up his schedule. Tomorrow, one small raid, shadowed by a new CC. Great. Another mind to deal with, except sitting right on top of his brain asking stupid questions. He could hardly wait. Well, at least he knew he had a tomorrow. Statistically one of these mechs he had dragging down his cortex probably didn't. Too early for him to start picking favorites for that role.

He called up mission specs again. Ugly one. Lot of close in building room-to-room fighting. The mechs he'd been given were relatively small and maneuverable (he was smaller), which was good, but they were also not exactly stomping war machines. If it came to a drawn-out firefight, they could run out of ammunition. Or guts. And/or guts. And if these Autobots used well-shaped charges….well, he wished the smaller building-to-building guys had better armor. Better yet, wished the mission orders were to flatten the building from orbit. But then, they wouldn't need him.

Not that he'd mind that. He hated this. Hated that he was so good at it.

Checked his chrono. Just about time. He called up realtime birdseye of the CZ and started his shell programs. Last minutes of peace for all involved.

*****

2.

"Three," he said, "Forward five paces, then down." His visor was running all six of his charges' locations, doubled in individual monitor and then team spread. They were ground approaching the target building, leap-frogging from safe point to safe point. "Hold." Barricade revolved the 3D of the target building. "May have a sniper. If so, on our approach 3B2." (Third floor, second side, second window in from the approach edge).

"I'm not fraggin' waiting," one of the voices—Two—griped. "Damn talking head doesn't know shit how to run a battle."

"Two, I said hold." There was a way to draw the sniper out. Two walking out from Barricade's carefully selected cover for him would work, but wasn't the ideal solution. He cursed as Two trotted out of the cover. He pulled Two's optics—at least the damn mech had his eyes on the right window. Was going to be Two this mission, huh? Barricade's hands keyed the override. Not yet. As long as Two had the sense to keep moving.

Nope. Two paused, raising his weapon to fire at the window. "Two, dammit!" he snarled, turning his voc vol up to max. Two flinched, which spoiled his shot, but also made him twitch just enough to one side that the sniper round merely punched a hole through his shoulder, and not his spark chamber. Two flailed to the ground, his weapon clattering next to him.

"One, Six, Three,"—they had the best angles of fire—"suppressive fire. Four, no—" he checked alt modes, "Five, alt up and throw a cable at Two. Drag him to your cover."

Five followed with an obedience bred by fear. Barricade's small hands called up Five's profile. First CC mission. Only a handful of other combat missions before this. Still, fear was good. Barricade could work with fear—and the obedient kind was better than the frozen kind. Five flung his alt mode's cable out in front of Two. "Grab hold," Barricade said. "Four, move up to Two's previous position. Ready your parabolic launcher." Another scramble. The other three kept up suppressive fire as Five dragged the injured bot behind the wall he crouched by. "Slack suppressive at your discretion. Five, you know how to use your emergency patch kit." A mild reprimand. He'd pulled Five's optics, and Five was just staring into, and through, the leaking hole that went through Two's shoulder. "If not, ask Two."

"Two's out," Five said, his voice shaky. "I think he's dead."

"Not dead," Barricade said. "Got his signal right here." But…close to unconsciousness. Barricade pulled up one of his programs. "Two. You can hear me. Lower your tertiary firewalls." Two complied, immediately—he'd learned his lesson. Would've been nicer if he'd learned a little sooner—they could be accomplishing the fraggin' mission instead of patching his sorry camshaft. Barricade's program invaded Two. "Two," he said, trying to gentle his voice, "I am rerouting your alarm systems, temporarily, to allow you to continue to function. Assist Five in stabilization repairs. He's freaking out."

Two's optics fluttered open as Barricade's program took hold. "Hey, let me help…." Barricade heard him say.

Four pinged him. "Ready."

"Aim."

Four aimed at the sniper's window.

"Adjust one floor up. Suppression's pushed him back from the window. Best bet is to cave the roof on him." Four quickly adjusted his aim. He waited for Barricade's approval. "Good." He fired. Barricade pulled his bio—he'd been on several CCs before. "Not your first CC rodeo, Four? Who was your previous CC?"

"Damage."

"Ah." Damage was good, but a little overcontrolling. Explained why Four did only as he was told. "You can take a bit more initiative with me, if you like. As long as you don't counter my orders."

"Got it." The smoke cleared—the fourth floor corner had collapsed onto the second floor. They saw one thin, red painted arm twitching in the rubble. One and Three cheered.

"Not over yet, warbots," Barricade said.

"One less." One replied.

"True."

"Entry looks clear," Three reported.

"Good. Regroup there. Two, you can move." Not a question. He could read on his HUD that Two's legs were functional.

He waited while they hopscotched their way through to the blasted open doors. He heard six pairs of feet crunch on broken glass and heat-brittled metal. He already had the first and second floorplans ready.

"We're all here." One reported, unnecessarily. Still, it was courtesy.

"Success. Now, we have two ways of doing this, little warriors. I can download the maps to you for continual-consult, or you can lower tertiary firewall and let me in."

"What's that do?"

"Be more like me whispering in your ear about bad ideas before you make them. Perhaps unpleasant, as I've been told I don't have the sexiest voice, but faster than the alternative."

"I'm in." Four again. "It's not bad, really. Done it before. Don't even really hear him—you just get an idea that something or someone might be behind that door. Stuff like that." He felt Four's firewalls drop. Four, he decided, was not only getting out of this mission alive, he'd get out with a commendation. If Barricade had anything to say about it. And, oh look, he DID.

The others all followed Four's lead, even, Barricade smirked to notice, Two. "If this gets creepy," Two muttered, "I'm shutting you down."

"I'll just have to keep my observations about your hot ass to myself, then, Two," he said, acidly. Three snickered.

"Gonna find you after this," Two snarled. "Fraggin' little runt." Barricade saw Two's optics leap from bot to bot. "Seriously, have you ever seen these guys? Barely bigger than drones. Don't have the armor to fight off a paper clip."

"Hey," One warned. "He's kind of got our lives in his hands right now. As in, including yours."

"One, I would never endanger a mission because of a team member's prejudices," Barricade said, blandly. He'd heard the 'pathetic droneling' line a few too many times for it to sting anymore. Much. "Now, we're all onboard, right? First objective." He dropped to his subvoc, splitting his attention into six different channels. This was…uncomfortable. His attention divided, his consciousness stretched over them, feeling, because of the temporary hack, exactly what they were feeling. Five's capacitor was a little too fast. Barricade couldn't do anything about that right now. Four seemed perfectly calm—probably the kind more than happy to dump his trust into someone else. Bots like Four always confused Barricade more than those like Two. He could understand fighting. But the complete acceptance of another bot's control of your fate, on any level. It was…uncomfortable to be trusted that much.

Two was pissed, but, well, no surprise there. And Two did stop when Barricade muttered to him that behind that next door was a lovely place to have a bomb. "Go in high or low?" he asked.

"Their methods are too inexact—they don't have a preference. Blow a new door." He heard Two's approving grunt. Apparently anyone who authorized high firepower started to climb in Two's estimation.

"Four," he said, on another channel, "hang back. Getting footfalls above you. Can you get to a doorway?"

"Moving. Why?"

Before Barricade had a chance to answer, the ceiling in the room Four had been in ripped as the insurgents above began shooting AP rounds through the floor. "Idiotic," he muttered, to Four, "destabilizing their own floor."

"Desperate?"

"Maybe. Or they have something planned. Can you make injured sounds? Let them think they hit someone. Bad."

Four acknowledged and, before the shots died away, began howling. Realistically enough to send chills down Barricade's central line. And Barricade had heard the real thing more than enough times. After a moment, Four let his cries die to a whimper and fade out. "Good enough?"

Barricade grunted assent. A little too convincing for his sensor-net's liking. He walked the others through clearing the first floor without incident. No contact yet. They rallied below the stairwell. "They think we're one down. Don't have hard numbers on them yet—two, possibly three on the next floor—several more up above, but they might rush down to help. Next floor going to be rougher. Ready?"

3.

No fight this time. Three aimed his weapon up around the turn of the stairwell. "Any grenades or other suspicious things," Barricade cautioned, "you jump DOWN. Not up. Let them isolate themselves. Don't get cut off."

They glided up the stairwell with the kind of speed that spoke more how vulnerable they felt in the narrow funnel of the stairwell than if they'd sung a song about it. As each hit the top, he fanned them out in order of priority vector.

Three spotted the first charge. "CC?" he called. "What's this?" Barricade pulled up Three's optics. A dirty looking lump of…lumpiness, really. Greyish beige blob like some plaster had slagged off the walls. Would have been convincing if there were any other signs of heat slag. And the finger-marks, also. Amateurish. Must have been assembled in haste.

"Three," he said, 'Withdraw. Back the way you came. Do NOT turn your back on primary target door." Three backpedaled.

Four found two more charges, these up higher in the walls. And spaced far enough apart to hit the interior support beams. "Good spotting," Barricade said. "Whole second's wired to blow. Still have two of their registry on this floor so they're not quite set to blow it. Nonetheless, get yourselves by a window, and punch it out if need be. I signal you, you jump."

"Jump?" One again. Seems Two had tagged out with him as Most Annoying.

"Tuck and roll at the end. You want some distance between you and the building. Especially if they blow the support beams." He saw them rearrange themselves, backs to windows. "Step one to the left, each. Just in case they have a sniper across the road." Paranoia sometimes paid off. He could feel Four's pulse drop even more. Apparently, Barricade's paranoia soothed him. Made him feel he was really being looked after. Great.

He felt, through his hack, everyone else's tension. Like he didn't have enough of his own. It wasn't entirely unlikely that the Autobot insurgents would blow the charges with one of their own caught in it. All about the greatest good—sometimes, Barricade had discovered, that meant suck-all for the individual. Nothing. The registers on his screen seemed to amble about. Waiting. Were they drones? Fakes? If so, more than enough time to blow the second floor.

It hit him. Three's door—the one he had been heading to. Must have the trigger. Right in the center of the building. If they'd gone in using the textbook tactics, the whole team would have lined up, one big happy group, to get blown back to the Pit. Good thing CC had thrown the textbook out. "Three," Barricade said. "range weapon, please, and step back to the doorway where you found that charge."

He heard/felt Three swallow. "What's up, CC?"

"They're waiting for us to trigger it. Behind that door. Can you blast it open with your range weapon?" Three looked down at the door at the end of the hall, his eyes lingering on the charge. "Pretty sure."

"Wouldn't be unusual, according to The Book, to blow the door with a projectile blast."

"Gotcha." Three altered the magazine of his range weapon to metal slugs.

"Hold for a second. You're going to have to run like hell."

"Figured."

"Drop secondary firewalls."

"Why?"

"Want to run like hell?"

Three was confused, but dropped his walls. Barricade clicked off the force governors in Three's legs. "Now go."

Three blasted the door. As soon as the others heard the noise, like a beautiful synchronized piece, they threw themselves out of the windows. Three spun, and, with his legs boosted by the removal of the force governors, pounded down the hall hard enough to dent the floor. The blast caught him just as he reached a window, blasting him flat out. Barricade's program reached in, bending his head down into a protective roll. His primary weapon got torn from his hands in the landing, and his legs were shaking when he got up, and bits of his back plating were scored, but he was otherwise uninjured. Three turned to stare at the building.

The second floor blew straight out in a blast of white heat, slamming the third floor hard enough to collapse parts of the building to the foundation. "Frag….." Three breathed.

4.

"What now, CC?"

"Normally, I'd say roach-stomping, but even Autobots aren't stupid enough to blow the building up while they're in it. Unless they have some safety. We might have to go back in. If you need a hobby, you might lob a few grenades at anything that moves."

"On it," Six said. He moved up to crouch behind a wall across the street. Took cover, Barricade noted, without needing to be reminded.

"Wait and see?" One said.

"Wait just a little while."

"Why couldn't we blow the whole building ourselves?" Two asked. Barricade felt his brow crease in irritation, but not at Two. That was a damn good question.

"Short answer? What? And spare us all this fun and manly bonding? Long answer: probably something or someone in there they want verified dead. Better with a chance of 'taken alive'." Mission specs were silent on this, but that meant nothing. Intel was a mess right now after the Autobots had had that huge 'victory' (also known as a massacre) over at Bindir Hub. That's where Damage had been.

"Something's moving," Four reported. "Either two bots or one big hunched over one."

Smoke and chemical blowback from the explosion was foxing Barricade's birdseye. He could register a hit, but nothing more. "Can you verify, Four?"

"No."

"Assume armed. Better yet, assumed bomb with legs, especially if it comes near you."

"Blow it now?"

"Wait. See if we can get visual." Barricade reached for the metadata. If they could get a visual, he could match it against any known high-value targets. That would give him a start figuring out how to react.

"CC," one of them said, his voice anxious. "It's stopped moving."

"As in dead?"

"No. Just…stopped."

Barricade hit all comms. "Everyone's near cover. Prepare to duck if it blows. Can anyone give me angle visual?"

"I can," Two said. "Optical separator." Two unscrewed one of his optics and fed it out along its cable on the top of the wall he crouched behind.

"Let me worry about this, warbots. The rest of you, watch the rubble. This could be a distraction and we don't want the rats slipping away." He cut his comm down to Two. "How are you doing?"

"Fine."

"Can adjust for any discomfort."

"Can you give me my fraggin' arm back? Right now I have 12% mobility."

"Repairable."

"Doesn't help us now." Two was mad. Not even really at Barricade. More like mad at himself for having been so slag-stupid in the first place. Barricade was used to being the scapegoat. Unfortunately.

"Can boost targeting and dexterity in your remaining arm."

"Can you?"

"Need access to secondary."

"None of the other CCs do this."

"None of the other CCs have my success rating." A long hesitation, and Two dropped his secondary firewalls. Barricade's programs rushed in, shifting the targeting and power protocols to the useable arm. He felt Two's dislike for him and a residual throb of pain from Two's chest-wound.. No amount of him letting Two blow giant holes in something was going to make Two not hate him. Especially when Two blamed him for the giant hole blown in himself. This was a palpable presence, like a choking fog. That, Barricade thought, is gratitude from these warriors. Do not allow yourself to forget that.

Plenty of time to dwell on the petty interpersonal failings of the warrior class later. Right now, "Three and Five, mark that Two is at Alpha Bravo. Need some coverage around back—head to Charlie Delta." He watched the team-spread as the two mechs bounced behind rubble to the far corner. Quick, quiet, professional. Pointless to ask for much more, really.

"CC," Two said, impatient, "He's just waiting there."

"Exactly it. Waiting for something. Just haven't figured out what it is yet."

"CC," Two said, excitedly, "He's looking up. Could they have air support?"

Barricade pulled out the larger view. "Nothing within range currently to help."

Barricade pulled the entire team's optics, giving him a near 360 of the rubble pile. Most of the building had collapsed, except, strangely, the fourth floor, CD corner. As if it had been protected by a magical hand. It hung at an angle, but it was suspiciously intact. Reinforced. Whatever they wanted—whatever the Autobots wanted to protect—was in there.

"Three, Five, action's going to come your way, at CD corner. Six and One, don't change position but see if you can get an angle of fire on that corner."

"I hate waiting," Two muttered.

"Well, you can always spark things off like before," Barricade snapped.

"Fraggin' CC," Two muttered, as if CC were the vilest name he could think of to call someone.

The reinforced box wobbled. "Movement," Three said. Barricade could sense the uptic in five capacitors. Four was…pathologically calm. He was covering the AB corner with Two. Good enough.

A mech boiled out of the corner of the CD room, scrambling down two stories of rubble, assisted by gravity. Too fast and too unsteady to get a clear shot, though Primus bless Three for trying. Another mech rose up, blasting a heavy grenade straight at Three's cover. Three screeched. Direct hit. Barricade cursed. "Three, I'm shutting down your alarm systems. Stay calm." He shunted Three's pain signals and warnings into a junk-code processor. Three tried to take a look down at himself, see the damage. Barricade locked his neck. "Relax and lay back," he ordered. Mechs got bothered when they saw half their torso missing. He supposed he would too. But he didn't need Three's panic on top of everything else, just as it got hot. Feeling his alarm systems was bad enough.

"One, Six, divert to rear angle of that corner. Get that box, but watch your crossfire." Aiming up, it shouldn't be too much of an issue, but still—mechs got excited in the heat of battle.

The AB corner mech started firing, pinning Two and Four down. "We're good," Four said. "We can wait." Six and One blasted at the box's structure itself—not even trying to hit any of the mechs who clambered out. Destroy the hive. Good. Five fired wildly at the mechs, drilling the one who had hit Three. Another round from a grenade landed near Three, blasting away the remains of his cover.

"Five," Barricade said. "Let's get Three."

Five collapsed against the wall he was taking cover behind. His ventilation bordered on over-rapid, his capacitor red-lining. "I can't!" he gasped. Barricade did a quick check.

"You're uninjured, Five. Three needs you."

"I can't!" he wailed.

"Scared? I can help you."

Five made a hiccuping noise. Trying not to cry. Poor thing. Probably first blooded combat, and he'd seen two up close.

"I can help you," Barricade repeated, readying his shells. "You want to save Three. Three needs your help. You can help him. I can help you help him."

Three's breath, ragged. "O—okay."

"Lower your firewalls."

"What level.?"

Barricade checked Five's status. And Three's. He needed to get Three under cover, quick. "All of them."

"All?" Five squeaked, but he dropped them. Barricade was in. He moved quickly. No time to be gentle. Blown most of that trying to sweet talk Five into doing this. Barricade cut Five's control. "You want to come along for the ride or take a nap?"

"Uhhh," Five didn't know what he was asking.

"You're coming along. Relax and try to enjoy the ride." Barricade hijacked control of Five's entire system. First step, slow ventilation and capacitor. Second, cut pain. Third, move.

Five bolted from behind his cover as Barricade snapped off his force governors. Five's personality watched in horror as a round shot at him, piercing one arm. Barricade felt Five's mind flinch against his own, waiting for the pain. And when it didn't come, a kind of horror. Barricade boosted a chemical mix to calm Five down. Didn't need him going even slightly shocky on him and fouling Barricade's control.

Five's ungovernored legs launched him into a long sailing jump. Barricade snapped Five's main weapons open, his higher-speed processors calculating each shot. Five watched in an awestruck numbness as each round hit its mark. Barricade tucked Five's body into a roll, landing him by Three. Five caught another long look at his injured arm—yellow lubricant and blue fluid pooling green and sickish looking in his joints.

"You're fine," Barricade snapped. "Three needs you." He had Five scoop Three up with both arms, and turn and run a careful zigzag back to cover, his boosted reflexes dodging the rounds the enemy sent at him easily. He released control of Five just as Five collapsed behind the wall again, dropping Three on the ground beside him.

"Control back to you," Barricade said. "Patch him and wait here. You're rally for the medevac."

One and Six were pounding the reinforced room. Plascrete had almost entirely been shot away, revealing a metal boxlike structure. Which Six was working at with his rocket launcher. "Good work," Barricade said. Two and Four had kept the AB mech occupied. "Ready to finish him?"

"Damn right." Two. Of course.

"Love to hear your plan, Two."

"Why ruin it by explaining?" Two knelt down, daisy chaining the fuses of two grenades clumsily with one hand. "Time to see if your little voodoo worked, CC," he muttered, and lobbed them over the wall. The first one blew at the mech's feet, the second, lifted by the blast, closer to the mech's abdomen. Minus one leg, the mech collapsed to the ground, arms flailing, firing wildly.

"Nice." Barricade admitted. "You do like explosions, don't you?"

Four said, "Two's demolitions." Four hesitated, then rose up from behind his cover and blasted at the fallen mech. Still a little slow to take initiative, Barricade decided.

"Nice and nice," Barricade said. "Let's mop up."

He directed the functional mechs closer to the metal box, diverting the more injured Two to replace injured Five pulling security on the very injured Three. The rest was almost easy, if one counted brutality as easy. But they discovered, in the end, what the Autobots had been trying to hide. A Councillor. Taking refuge or collaborating? Didn't much matter now, after six different rounds went through him. Just…one less enemy. Barricade cursed the Intelligence failure. If he'd known they had a high value person there, he'd've been more careful. Still, mission objectives as listed, another success. Three casualties, no fatalities, though Three would be sketchy for a long time. He called in Medevac and Transport, and with only a grudging sense of relief, logged himself out of the CC console.


	3. Barricade: Control Act 2

_A/N Act Two—Act One was normalcy. Now we have some change to shake things up, and rising action. And more urban combat. Because I luvs its. _

5.

"Change of plan, CC 26G643AB." His CC supervisor called him into a small conference room. Two other mechs, large, warriors, sat with him, frowning.

Barricade shifted, nervously. Bad enough he woke up expecting a shadow CC on top of his brain. Now…called in by the big mechs. Who wanted him to see and feel every bit of difference between them. Their size—his size. He looked like a child compared to them, even with them sitting. They had offered him a chair, which he had of course refused. Hated his short legs dangling over the sides. Hated the awkward clamber. Wouldn't give them that spectacle. Hate me as I am, on the ground.

"Yes sirs," he said. Better to submit, at least in this.

"The matter is, 26G643AB, we were reviewing your commendations from yesterday's action." The supervisory mech narrowed his eyes at Barricade as if he should know exactly what he meant.

"Yes?"

One of the other mechs clicked on some footage—Barricade saw Five's heroic dash to save Three spool out in front of him. Damn, he thought, he was good. He made Five look damn good, to boot. Best work yet.

"This is not within Breakdown's physical capacity."

Breakdown? That was his designation? Strangely apt. Barricade suspected that 'Freakout' was probably already taken. "The footage is unaltered," Barricade said, blandly.

"We know that."

"We also know what Breakdown is capable of, 26G643AB." Barricade felt the weight of using his designation code instead of his name. He knew what that meant. Breakdown was a person. He was…a CC droneling. Not even worthy of a name. Just an alphanumeric code.

One of the supervisory mechs leaned back against his chair. "We want to know how you did it."

Play stupid or not? Might as well get it over with. "Primary systems takeover." The mech sitting next to his supervisor bolted upright.

"You can do that? You can hijack another bot's body?" One of the warriors, Bombshock, sat up, looking disturbed.

"Apparently so."

His supervisor frowned at Barricade's attitude. To the angry warrior, he said, "I told you so."

"That is not CC protocol," the other warrior snapped.

"Protocol would have gotten everyone on my team killed, yesterday," Barricade said. "If you read the report, you know the triggering device."

"That's no excuse to—take over another bot's primary systems," Bombshock said, with something like horror in his voice.

"I had Five's permission." If they were going to reduce him to an alphanumeric, he'd reduce their kind to a number.

"Five?"

"Breakdown's channel designation for the mission," the supervisor explained.

"This can't be tolerated," Bombshock said. "I recommend immediate termination." He turned to the other. "Tailwind?" Barricade felt his central core go cold. Hadn't this slagging moron realized that Barricade had saved Three? Salvaged the entire mission? And this was to be the thanks he got. Great. Well, life, he thought, nice knowing you. It sucked. And now it's over.

"No," the second warrior said. "Five was incapable of independent action at the time—he told us himself. If this unit can do that…I'd like to see what else he can do."

The supervisor nodded straight down. "You know my thoughts on the matter." The warriors nodded. Barricade—this unit—did not have the luxury of knowing his supervisor's thoughts on the matter. The supervisor frowned at him for a long moment.

"26G643AB, we are volunteering you for a special…experiment. As you know, your success rate is the highest in CC. Your fatality rate one of the lowest. And with this…news, you seem ideal for the next progression in the combat control program." He waited. Barricade eventually indulged him.

"And the next step is…?"

"Metacontrol. You would be connected not directly to front line troops, but to their CCs and through their CCs to them. We can coordinate larger scale attacks this way. Change the whole face of the war."

The thought was not a pleasant one. Bad enough ten-max warriors cluttering up his attention. They wanted more? They wanted him to be able to hijack more of them? Did they even know what they were asking? "And if I say no?"

The supervisor lifted one supraorbital ridge. "You cannot say no, Unit 26G643AB." He was not a person. Just a number. A number they wanted to wire into every slagging warrior in the field. Barricade shuttered his eyes. His answer was…irrelevant.

****

6.

"Good mission cycle, warriors," he began. "This is CC unit 26G643AB, personal designation Barricade, mission designation Meta. I will be your metacontroller for the upcoming action. And, incidentally, for the next few cycles, I am your god."

He had been Meta for seventeen long decacycles. Long enough for any thrill (there was none) to wear off, and any stress (there was plenty) to make some good toothmarks on his sanity. They'd started him small—two or three other CCs under him, easy missions. Overkill missions, really. Sending in three to four times the firepower needed. Just to…see if he could handle it. Each mission they set him new objectives—hijack one warrior. Two simultaneously. Tactical analysis while coordinating rescue. Agonizing challenges. He'd struggled to reach every one. But he'd made them. Why? Why did I push myself so hard? Why didn't I just admit something was out of my reach?

They would have kept the damn Meta program. Scaled it back to whatever he was actually capable of. Probably even kept him as the primary Meta. It didn't matter. But…he'd tried anyway. Some misguided notion not to let the big warmachines see there was something, anything, a little runty droneling like Barricade wasn't capable of. Blow their fraggin' minds. Get some respect. Get a name.

Meta was a name.

Mechs hustled for the Meta. Mechs got out of his way when he walked down a corridor now. They might stare after him, a little surprised by his stature, and, by now, freakish appearance, but there was something close to respect and very very far away from contempt in their optics.

He dropped his attention as the warriors logged in. Alphanumerics for them, too, now. The first being the code of the primary CC. Seventy warriors on this mission. Seven CCs. Seventy eight, if you wanted a full tally, minds and bodies Barricade—Meta—was responsible for. Biggest yet.

He called up the monitoring channel they'd installed on him. He was always being observed, now. Not as intrusive as a shadow CC but…eerie nonetheless. Meta suspected no bot particularly cared to be talked about behind his own back. Inside his own head.

"Getting a bit arrogant, isn't he?" Bombshock said. He'd only allowed this Meta project to go forward if he had monitoring authority.

"Always been like that. It's his sense of humor."

"Besides, with his record, he can get away with a little attitude." Tailwind had prepped by watching hours of the CC unit's footage.

"But…god?"

"He is, in a way. Choose who lives, who dies, who goes where? Even without hijacking their systems, he's in control. What other word would describe that?" Bombshock frowned—he didn't like it when Tailwind got philosophical.

"One day," Bombshock muttered, "he's going to take this too far."

That day wasn't the day he took it too far.

*****

7.

"Mission objective," the supervisor said. "Saejon Three. Autobot resupply center. This is a big one, Meta. This is our response to Bindir Hub."

"You remember Bindir Hub, Meta?" One of the monitors. The one who thought he'd go too far. What was his name? Bombshock. Right.

"Wasn't there. Damage was. But I remember." He raised one of his hands. They'd had to adapt to his processing speed with an extra set of arms. Fine when in harness, but he still hadn't gotten the hang of them in normal tasks. "Why our Intel's been so fragged up lately."

"Intel's fine," the other monitor growled. "Think you can do a better job of it?"

"Yeah, actually." He stared the monitor down. With the standard-CC-issue four eyes and now with four arms to match, not a lot of bots could outstare him. He just looked too…odd.

"The point is," the supervisor cut in, trying to regain control. "This is our chance for payback. Your chance, too." They waited for him to say something gung ho. They could wait for a long fragging time. He'd do the mission—didn't really have a choice, did he?—but all this pretending to be excited about it? That happy warrior shit was…for the warriors. This was all just a game for him. A very dull, very stressful, very un-fun game.

"Meta, are you all right?" The 'go too far' monitor.

"Fine. Oh, the hands?" His smaller set had been shifting, agitatedly. "Don't know what to do with them when not in CC." He gave a thin smile.

"You sure you can handle one hundred?" Tailwind asked.

"One hundred and ten," Meta corrected. "Monitor the CCs too. And myself. One hundred and eleven. Or am I the only one who counts myself?" Getting a little tired of how CCs didn't apparently rate as beings to these warriors. "Last mission was one hundred."

"Right. Sorry." Tailwind gave a thin smile.

He shrugged. "Can handle it. What are we facing?" About time this conversation steered away from Meta and back to the enemy.

They scrolled out the objectives. To take Saejon Three, they needed to capture an entire approach as well. Three routes, at his discretion—ground, underground, and air. The objective itself was a series of small warehouses under a force dome. Freerunning (non-CC) demolitions experts were already in place to blow the force dome generators at his mark. Once in, the mission was simple. Destroy everything.

"If it's in the dome," the supervisor said, "It's the enemy." Like he needed it to be boiled down to that stupid.

*****

8.

He'd split his teams, some taking some CC'd air support, some going ground. He didn't like underground—no birdseye. The mission set off was for the middle of recharge cycle, when most good and law-abiding bots, even Autobots, were catching their forty volts. One joy of martial law, he supposed. He held the air support back—they could make better time and the noise might alert Autobots to their presence.

Light resistance til they hit the dome. Right on cue, the dome's force generators blew, sparking pink and white into the nightcycle sky.

"In," A warrior reported—B3.

"Easy part's over," Meta cautioned. They better not think they'd accomplished anything more than a walk down a street in the dark. Not til the dome was cleared. If it's in the dome, it's the enemy. Got it? Got it. Meta, you must be a moron. Some sort of idiot savant. If it's in the fraggin' dome, it's the fraggin' enemy. Like he didn't know how to read his own registers.

"To the right, energon refinery. C and E teams—you have no explosives. You clear it. Metal slugs only." He released C and E CCs to light monitoring. Having all of the consciousnesses in his head for a long time was agonizing. Confusing. He lost track of who he was sometimes. Where he was. You, he said, are in harness. You are Meta. Meta decides to pull back from C and E and let their primary CCs do their jobs to make his life a little easier.

"H and J teams, you're on perimeter. Optics bright. Everyone in Saejon sector probably saw the dome go down. Expect…something."

"A and D, you go straight up the middle. Armory to the left, some sort of warehouse—contents unknown—to the right. Go past main doors twenty paces, stop, and use your demo to blow a new front door. No fatal funnels for us tonight."

It went like this for two cycles, directing each team as an individual unit, at the CC level. Too easy. Meta began thinking they were actually going to make it without superlative ugliness. The Autobots were going down in droves.

Until E team disappeared. Blew right off his registry. He heard the howl of the CC in agony—losing that many linked-in minds—all of those alarm systems, fatality alerts—going off at once. He reached in and shut down E's CC, pulling him offline. No survivors. Whatever blew E away seemed to have given the Autobots new spine for resistance—they opened up with renewed vigor.

"Meta, what happened?" Tailwind asked.

Meta swore. "My frag up. I'll fix it."

"What happened?" More insistent.

"Have to do fraggin' everything, don't I?" That was it. He pulled primary control for the remaining 87 operational fighters. They couldn't do the damn job, he was going to get the blame? He would do it. He could do it.

*****

In the control monitoring room, Bombshock shook his head. "He's losing it. I told you it was only a matter of time."

"He's got it," said the supervisor.

"No, he's right. Meta's losing control. We have to pull him." Tailwind's distress was obvious. He believed in the Meta program. Believed in Meta. They glared at each other. The supervisor looked down at his screen. "Primus, he's taking all of them," he said, shocked. He looked up. "Fine. Pull them."

*****

Another unit dropped off his registry. How? What now? He'd heard no explosions. What had taken out ten warriors that he didn't know about? His capacitor started racing. Where did they go? His consciousness struggled with controlling the remaining bots. Mission,simple. If it's in the dome, it's the enemy. Fine. Even overstretched, he could do that.

He called up status. Twenty two of his registering offline. At least they wouldn't fight his control. He hit his override, and the offlined mechs stirred to life, optics dim.

In the dome: ten new enemies. Not on his registry. Enemy. Where had they come from? No matter: he knew for damn sure where they were going: to the Pit.

*****

"Dammit! He's killing them!" The supervisor's voice was shrill.

"Who?" Bombshock lunged for the supervisor's screen.

"Alpha team! You pulled their connect and now he thinks they're the enemy!"

"Stop him."

The supervisor swore, and hit his comm. "Meta. This is Combat Control One. Cease action."

"Can't!" came the frantic reply. "Losing them like flies here. I cut 'em loose they'll all die."

"Meta." His voice harder. "Cease action."

"Mission not complete. If they're in the dome, they're the enemy. I can get them. I can still get them. Where are they coming from?" Meta's voice skirled up in panic.

Tailwind swore. "Doesn't realize who he's killing. Stop cutting teams loose, Bombshock. Don't you see what he's doing? If they're not on his registry, they're targets."

"Well what? Do you want us to let him run them all down?"

"Meta. Direct order. Cease action."

A long empty static.

"Meta?"

"Do you want them all to die?" Meta's voice was tight. "I can save them. Or I can kill them all. Right now. They fight me less when they're dead. Let me do my job."

The supervisor went cold. Meta, a spindly little bot barely bigger than a drone, currently had…he called up, 68 warriors' systems on hijack. Thirty of whom registered as status offline. Which he'd just said he would terminate if he wasn't allowed to continue—exterminating any team that went off registry. "Yes, fine," he said, and cut comm. "We need another solution."

"Easy. Pull his plug."

The supervisor nodded. "I'll give the order."

Tailwind shook his head. "End of the Meta program."

"Pushed him too hard. Should have known better."

Bombshock snapped, "Apologize to his corpse. I told you this would happen. And now—how many good bots are we losing?"

*****

9.

Vertigo almost made it to Meta's CC harness when he felt his entire body go rigid. "How did you get in here," a voice hissed from somewhere inside his processor. "Are you in here now too? Are you all coming after me?" Vertigo whimpered. "What is your mission?" the voice demanded. When Vertigo didn't answer, he felt a burst of pain shoot through his entire primary sensor net. Two alarms redlined. "What is your mission?" the voice demanded again.

"To…disconnect Meta."

"You are the enemy." And Vertigo fell.

*****

"What the frag just happened?" Bombshock said. "Would you please explain to me what the frag just went on down there?"

The supervisor bit his lip. "Must have…maybe. I mean, it's the only way that explains it…."

"What?"

"He must have range-hacked Vertigo. If he'd CCd him before, the firewall permissions would still be in place and he could just—" The supervisor gestured with his hands. CC was hard to explain to outsiders, "reach out and take him."

*****

"Stop!" one of the warriors—H5—shrieked at him, over his controls. "They're us. They're our guys!" H5's voice was filled with horror as he felt, saw, his own body shooting at his comrades.

"They are not. They have been suborned. They are in the dome. They are our enemy."

"Stop. Listen. Please. You have to stop!"

"H5, I am tired of your voice." Meta cut H5's vocal processors. He could still feel H5's mind thrashing around in his. But at least his audio was clear. He had enemies coming at him from all sides now. Even here in the CC. They'd sent two more after Vertigo, as if he could be distracted by one and let the other through to kill him. He had dropped them both. No need to ask their mission.


	4. Barricade: Control Act 3

_A/N: Act three. Two sections left—this is the climax. The Epilogue is the 'denouement' (it's better because it's FRENCH! And in between is a kind of pervy chapter. It's not *hot*, so don't get your hopes up (my LJ has the smutty stuff!), but it's got some character development, if you've a strong stomach._

10.

"I can do it. I have never undergone combat control," Starscream said. That was the requirement that had gone out on all-channels. As a Seeker, he had flatly refused, and no one had had the authority—or the gyros—to call him on it. Seekers did not submit to drop their firewalls for anything. "What is it I must do?"

"Go to CC-1Alpha. There's one harness in there. Meta's harness. He's…lost control."

"Do I kill him?"

"If necessary."

"No—wait," another voice cut in. "If he's hardhacked the warriors on the ground, and he dies….?"

A pause. "Try not to kill him."

"Try? I shall do more than try." The jet sounded offended. As if he only had an on-off switch? He would find a way to disconnect this Meta without killing him. He was a warrior, and a warrior knew more than merely how to kill. Meta would be stopped.

CC-1Alpha was a cramped, dark, ugly room, Starscream thought. With the three bodies on the floor, it was also cluttered. Combat Control was not a glamorous job, apparently. The one they called Meta dangled from a harness, tilted forward, four hands clawing at the air. His heel pistons fired intermittently. His entire head was enveloped in an enormous black globe. Cables, as thick as the jet's own power cords, ran from the ceiling to the helmet. This. This was Meta. This was of whom they were all afraid. He was…tiny.

Starscream felt something brush his sensor net. Then, Meta spoke.

"You. Who are you? Why can't I get you?"

The jet said nothing, sidling nearer the helmet, curious. Trying to peer through.

"They sent you to kill me."

"They did not. They sent me to stop you."

"Semantics. Don't have time for it." Meta swore. "Losing more. How? Where are they coming from? Where?" The hands moved fast enough to blur even in the jet's optics.

"Meta," Starscream said, gently. "What is your personal designation?" Sidelining the bot's attention as he got closer.

"Unit 26G643AB. Barricade."

"Barricade. Stop."

"I can't! They're dying! I can't let them die. I have to do it. I have to do it all myself."

The jet was close enough. He swept one of his long arms out over the Meta's control helmet, severing the cables. Disconnected, the helmet fell from the ceiling in a shower of sparks. The jet caught the smaller bot in one arm. He jerked the helmet off—its faceplate shattered against the floor. Starscream looked down at this…thing in his arm. Barely larger than a sparkling, eyes deformed by the helmet, hands still clawing the air. It seemed not to register him immediately, as if its optics were still showing him CC screens. Suddenly, it shrieked, a sound that ripped through the jet's audioprocessors. Raw pain. "Gone!" Meta shrieked. "All of them? I've lost all of them. All dead. All dead! What didn't I see? What didn't I do!" His limbs started flailing, not like before. Almost like…some sort of seizure.

The jet held the smaller bot away from himself, letting the thing flail its way through the seizure, until the ugly little thing started tearing away at himself, his small claws digging into the unarmored skin of his other arms, his chest, his face.

Starscream pressed the bot against his chest, smothering its voice, pinning its panicked limbs against him. It scrabbled, its small hands clawing at his armor. This. This was the bot who had killed his thirty of his own mechs. Three more here in CC. And the other combat control bots? This. He couldn't even scratch Starscream's paint. "Barricade," he said. "It's over."

"It's not over. I can do it! I lost them. All of them? How? How? I don't understand!" The smaller bot started trembling, all over. Starscream patted the small mech, awkwardly. Its deformed optics leaked optical lens lubricant, probably from the change of lighting. Even the dim light of the CC seemed to hurt its optics. It pressed its ugly face against his shoulder.

"Losing a battle is difficult, Barricade. Losing good warriors is also difficult. It is…normal to be upset. It is not your fault. It is simply how battles go. If you persist in blaming yourself, you will swiftly be non-functional."

"It's my fault. My fault! I didn't go in early enough. I didn't see…something." It banged its head against Starscream's chest, hard enough to bruise the jet's clavicular strut. "What didn't I see?" it moaned.

"Barricade." Starscream jerked the small mech's face up to his. Its feet kicked feebly against his thigh. Helpless. Like a drone. Starscream's spark ached: this little bot was too young. Too young, and they had done this to him. How many deaths, how many maimings had the little thing seen through his CC system? How many had he had to push through, work around? And he had almost never lost. And this, this was his reward. Starscream knew the CC supervisor wouldn't hesitate to terminate the little mech. Public show, close the books on the Meta project. It would be a liability to have Meta work CC again—who would ever trust him?

"Little one," he said. It was so easy, too easy, to think of the small mech as a sparkling. Not just his size, but his immaturity, the raw emotion splashed over his malformed little face—all the anger and grief and sorrow and helpless fury that older mechs learned to mask. "You have one life you can save. One more." The mech's eyes struggled focus on him, listening intently to his words. The hands calmed down, clutching tiny fingers around his armor plating. "Little one, who are you? You can be Meta, or you can be Barricade. Which one are you?"


	5. Barricade: Control Interlude

_A/N: The Pervy Chapter. I really hesitated (still am, actuallly) posting this chapter. It is sexual, they are both of age, though Barricade is young and small. It is not erotic at all:I am completely aware of it. (So, please no reviews telling me how not hot it is--you want hot robot porn, hit my LiveJournal). However, interesting things happened in the chapter, particularly in terms of Starscream's characterization, that made me decide to post this chapter, even though I am VERY uncomfortable with its contents and what my (very few though devoted) followers might think is a very disturbing trend. My Bayverse fics are non slash, even though I'd probably get more readers if they weren't, and I'm sorry if I disappointed you by this...event. It had to happen. If you choose to skip this chapter, cool: the Epilogue will wrap things up for you fairly well, and you will NOT be weirded out. Promise. _

11.

Starscream muttered to himself. The little thing would not get off him. It had locked its little hands and then its toes around his armor, clinging to his chest plating like some sort of obscene tumor. The only way to get it off would involve breaking its fingers, and after what it had been through, Starscream didn't want to cause it any more pain. So, he let the damn thing hang on to his chest, comm'ing the CC to tell them that Meta was down and the rest of the mission was on them, and decided the best bet would be to hide in his recharge until Meta/Barricade decided to let go. Eventually, the little mech would have to get bored, or hungry, sooner or later. He hoped sooner.

He locked his own joints into recharge position, the little mech still clinging to his armor. Probably in recharge itself at this point. He seemed to be resting quietly at least—Starscream wouldn't care to bet that Barricade could have some horrific nightmares. He let himself drift into recharge.

*****

Barricade waited a cycle after the larger mech's eyes dimmed in recharge. He was…confused. He had lost all of them. Had this one helped him? Or had he hurt him? Had he been responsible for losing the team at Saejon Three?

The large jet had not tried to kill him. That he knew. In the confused mess of his memories, he knew that the jet hadn't tried. Had spoken the only soft, decent, kind words he remembered hearing. Had looked at him, and saw him, and treated him not as an object. Yes, he recoiled—Barricade knew he was ugly. But the jet hadn't held that against him. He clung to the larger mech as the only stable, solid thing in his world.

He didn't think it would save him. He had fucked up. And he would be terminated. Part of him thought that as long as he stuck to the jet, they wouldn't terminate him. Pathetic way to gain a few extra cycles of life. But…he wasn't ready to let go. Let go of life, not yet. Let go of the jet…maybe.

He released his finger locks, warily, waiting for the jet to react. Nothing. He pulled himself forward, his eyes struggling to focus. He was so used to the 270 vision he needed for the Meta helmet that getting his eyes to focus straight ahead was almost a painful strain. But he wanted to see. He wanted to know who this was. Whether it was his executioner or not. Barricade wanted to at least offline knowing who had…killed Meta. He wanted a better look.

He released his toe locks, and stretched one foot down, trying to find a foothold. His hands slipped—and he was caught by the larger mech's arm. He looked up, alarmed, and saw the jet's large red eyes, full-online bright. He froze.

"Barricade?" the mech said, his voice amused. "Are you trying to escape?"

"No." He was torn between a desire to push away from the jet and to scramble back up to his previous safety. The jet's arm was strong against his back. "They will terminate me. I…accept that."

"I would not," the jet said.

"I failed."

"Did you?"

Barricade felt himself start to shake again. "Don't—don't really want to talk about it right now."

"Of course. Do you want to talk at all?"

He twisted his head to look at the jet. "Don't know."

"Ah. At least you are honest. That is a good start, little Barricade."

"Stop staring at me."

"Am I? You are…interesting looking."

"Ugly, you mean."

The jet flinched. "There is more to life than one's appearance, Barricade."

"Don't have a life. Not after daycycle."

"I would not be that certain of that, little one."

"Tactically best solution."

"Not all decisions are made tactically, Barricade. And not all tactical decisions are right."

"Don't I know that." The small mech collapsed into himself, his smaller arms hugging his chest.

"Do not think like that, little one."

"Don't have anything else to think. All I know."

The larger mech peeled one of Barricade's larger arms off his chest with one talon. "There is more to life than tactics, too."

"Like what?" he challenged.

"Like…." The jet foundered. This was…unexpectedly awkward. The smaller mech looked at him, his four ugly eyes narrowing. Not hostile…considering.

The small mech lunged at him, and before Starscream could process what was happening, had fastened its hands around his collar armor. His smaller hands probed under the armor, prodding delicately at the jet's throat cables.

Starscream tilted his chin up. "Are you trying to kill me, little one?" he asked, amused.

"Don't know." The little mech's voice sounded confused. "Don't think so? Want to feel…something."

The small fingers were gentle on the jet's cables. It felt surprisingly good. He felt his eyes drifting closed again. They blinked open in alarm as the smaller bot bent his head down, his glossa licking delicately at Starscream's shoulder assembly. "Barricade," he said, his voice tight. "You must stop."

"Why?" The little mech licked at his audio. Despite himself, the jet shuddered. He was not, he simply refused, to be aroused by the ugly little thing.

An innocent question. In a way. "It is dangerous."

"I'd rather have you kill me than one of them," he murmured in the jet's neck. "Know you."

"Oh, Barricade, I do not wish to kill you."

Barricade's systems were firing strange signals at him. He wanted to touch the jet—that's all he knew. Power. Real power. Respect. He spoke with such confidence and authority. Real respect. They feared Starscream, as they had feared Meta. Without Meta, he was nothing. He…needed. Needed to touch that kind of power, that kind of authority. At least once more.

"You must stop," the jet repeated, dumbly. He felt his head cock toward the smaller mech, opening his throat . The mech took the invitation, licking, no, properly kissing his way along the jet's struts and into the throat cabling. Starscream bit down a moan. No. He must stop. This cannot continue. He is twisted and malformed and I—I am the Air Commander. I cannot…I will not be…intimate with…this thing.

"Make me." The smaller set of hands began tracing tiny patterns down the jet's jaw, while one of his larger hands circled the rim of his audio.

"Barricade—"

"Meta," the mech whispered in his ear.

"Meta is dead."

"Meta doesn't die because I said he did once."

"It will take," the jet quivered under the almost-burning hot sensation of the smaller bot's mouth against his throat, "more than once, yes. But Meta has to perish."

"No." Little teeth, hard on his throat. The jet winced, his breath ragged. His hands came up behind the little mech, ready to tear him off.

"He must, if you are to survive, little one."

"Make me stop, then. Kill him again. Kill him for real." One of the smaller hands teased the heavy plating over the jet's spark chamber. That was enough. The jet snatched the bot off him with both hands, holding him away as though he were possessed.

"Barricade," he said, sternly. "This is not allowed. You do not touch another mech without his permission."

"Put me down." Starscream didn't like the coldness of the tone. That was Meta. That wasn't the voice of the small wailing thing that had clung to him.

"No."

"Down."

"Let go of Meta." He felt another strange brush at his sensor net, just like he had felt in CC1Alpha. "Barricade," he said, sternly. "You cannot range hack everyone to get what you want."

The small mech's eyes were hard for a second, then, soft, almost quivery. "Would be easier."

"For you, it would be easier. But that is not how things work."

"It is how things work. They do what I tell them."

The jet sighed. "Barricade, you are no longer Meta. You cannot."

The small mech's face crumpled, its whole frame shaking in sobs. Sobs larger and louder than the situation required. He was crying, in a sense, about something much larger than not being released from the jet's hands.

"Kill me. I can't." The small mech sobbed piteously. The jet pulled it in again, close to him. "Shhhh," he said, soothingly. "You are strong, Barricade. You will learn." The small mech sobbed against him, again, and for a moment the jet feared the damn thing would latch on to his armor again. He lifted the bot up to his eye level. "Barricade," he began. Before he could continue the small mech pulled him into a kiss. He jerked his head back, startled. But the other mech's contact felt hot against his mouth. He pulled the mech away. "Why?"

The mech had started sobbing again. "Don't know," it wailed. "Don't want to die." He gnawed idly on one of his spindly wire-frame arms.

"You shall not die, Barricade. I assure you."

The mech snorted through his tears. Such a jarring change of personality—it struck the jet as almost ghastly. "Yeah. I used to tell that kind of crap to my mechs too. Promise I'd get them out alive. Guess what? Sometimes I couldn't. No one alive to file a complaint."

The jet considered. That was Meta. Again. How to get through to Barricade? "Barricade," he said. "Here is the issue. You have been Meta, yes. But Meta," he freed one of his hands, propping the small mech in the crook of the other elbow, and tapped the small mech on the forehead with one talon. "Meta only lives here. You have also, however," he poked the small mech's foot, "here, and," the spark chamber, "here. A body and a spark. You are more than Meta."

"Don't know how." Halfway sullen, halfway terrified.

Starscream glanced at his door. Locked. Perhaps, if no one ever saw and no one ever knew…. "Fine," he said. "Why did you kiss me?"

"Wanted to."

"Why?"

A pause, as though he were processing something that refused to yield a good answer. "Don't know."

"Try to know." He closed his eyes, pulling the small mech closer. He felt the thing's mouth on his again, the glossa flicking along his labial plating He sighed against his will. The small mech grew bolder, pressing harder, exploring. The jet responded, probing the thing's mouth with his own. Barricade gave a surprised squeal, his tiny hands tightening on the jet's face. He began quivering—not the dangerous panicked hysterical time like before, but a quiver of desire. The jet knew this one. Would he have to?

He traced a line down the small mech's central dorsal line. Barricade arched up, into his touch, breaking the kiss, his own eyes shuttered closed. The jet shifted, laying the small mech down on the floor, kneeling over him. He ran his talons over the small body. Barricade shook, his breath uneven. Almost…scared.

"Are you frightened, little one?"

"No. Yes." The four eyes revolved to him. "Don't know."

Starscream smiled, gently. "There is much you do not know. I am not the one to teach you, however."

The eyes hardened. "Will die tomorrow, you know."

The jet smiled. "Will not. I know. And I do not fall for such simplistic appeals."

The mouth quirked down. "What do you fall for?"

The jet looked up at the far wall, considering. "I fall for flattery, of course. Gentleness. Please. Not orders.

Not demands." Would it be that easy to get through to him? Begin to retrain him?

The small mech grabbed at his larger hands, his eyes desperate. Starscream hadn't accounted for how aroused he was making the small mech. "Please? Please." A moment. "Don't even know your name."

The jet grinned. "Ah, now you are ruining it. There is such a thing as too much honesty, little one." The creature's face was despairing. The jet was overcome with sorrow. He pushed aside his dignity, his pride. He bent forward, and kissed the smaller mech. Barricade whimpered, all four of his arms coming up to stroke the jet's face, his audio, his cheek flares. It was…unique. "My name," he breathed, "is Starscream. Your name?"

The mech blinked up at him, his ventilation rapid. "My? Name. My name is B-barricade."

"Yes," Starscream said. He stroked the smaller bot's body again, feeling him tremble. "What is it you want, Barricade?"

"I want you." A hint of Meta's harshness. The jet shook his head. "Not correct. And what do you want of me?"

The fingers closed on his cheeks. "Want to fuck you." Meta.

Starscream pulled away, breaking the small mech's grasp easily. "That is not correct." The smaller mech growled, twisting on the floor in frustration. Starscream let him squirm until he was belly first to the floor.

"Tactically poor decision, little one," he teased. He traced a series of small kisses down the bot's central dorsal. The pelvic girdle twisted. " What is it you want?"

The mech's voice was agonized, as if he were in actual pain. "I—please! Don't know. Don't know what you want me to say…please…?"

The jet loomed closer, licking at the back of Barricade's audio. "Please is a very good start, little one." He reached under the small mech's side. "Have you ever interfaced before?"

The bot squirmed, twisting his face away.

"That is a no. Is that what you want?"

"Y-yes."

"Who wants it?"

"I do—Barricade. I do. Please." He sounded almost desperate.

"That," the jet breathed into his audio, "is correct." He opened the hatch, drawing out the mech's module. It audio-pinged in his hand. Poor thing. He was desperate. The jet opened his own hatch, and plugged the module in. The small mech gasped, writhing on the floor. Starscream felt his datastream—hard, insistent. Determined. So like him. He let the bot roll over. All four little claws dug into the floor, all four eyes fixed on the jet's face. The jet ground his dental plates against his own module. He would not. No. He would not stoop to interfacing with the little monster. This was...simply to make him feel better. And if Barricade didn't know any better….

The mech's breathing came in deep pants. He pressed himself flat, almost rigid, against the floor. With a loud squeal, his small body bucked off the floor as he overloaded, the four eyes spiralling freakishly in separate directions. Starscream grunted: The pain was…hard to endure. The jet fought a rush of lust—not for the little mech, but one just brought on by the biomechanics of the overload. He would not. Not with him. Bad enough he felt the little mech's overload cycling through his uptake cycle. Bad enough he had kissed the wretched thing. While the mech was still faded out, the jet carefully unplugged the module and stowed it away.

The four eyes blinked open—the mech looked confused. He raised himself on one elbow. Starscream rocked back on his heels, gasping as his knee bumped his interface hatch. "Did you enjoy that?" Not a coy question. Not with the little mech so…raw.

"Yes," Barricade said, unsteadily. "Think so."

"Good, little one. Now, recharge and we shall see what tomorrow brings."

"No. Please." A little of Meta's pushiness, but softened. "You?" Starscream knew what the little mech was asking.

"I am fine," he said, benignly.

"Not how it's done, is it?"

Starscream lowered his eyes. "No, little one. That was not how it is normally done."

The mech grunted, holding Starscream's gaze for a long moment, before it seemed he lost control of focussing his eyes. "Can understand why, I guess." He pushed himself up to a sitting position, trying to find something to look at that wasn't the jet who, three times his size, loomed over him, or himself. Starscream caught the look of revulsion in the mech's own eyes as he caught sight of his arms. "Don't know why you'd rather be in pain than fuck me, though." Not Meta's voice, though words he'd probably choose.

"It is not that, little one."

"Then what is it?"

"I—I cannot. It is a violation of trust. It would make me seem…viciously motivated."

"That you took me back here and fucked me."

"Yes." Starscream felt saddened that the small mech seemed determined to try and mask his weakness through vulgarity. That was not the way. He would have to learn.

The smaller mech grabbed him. "Don't care." He pulled the larger mech down to him, "Don't want you to suffer because of me," he said, his voice rough. His four hands stroked the jet's face. Starscream pulled back a few inches, his spark breaking. A droneling should not have these thoughts, these worries, these fears. A droneling should not have endured…half of what Barricade had seen as Meta.

"Do you want me to?" he asked. His module already signalled its assent. Only he, Starscream, the personality in charge, didn't want to do it. He felt sorry for the little thing. But desire is not borne from pity. But still. "Please," Barricade whimpered. The little thing very well could face termination in the morning. For all of Starscream's bluster, there was only so much he could do.

"Yes," the jet said. "Then." He palmed open his hatch. Hesitated over Barricade's. "Are you certain?"

He could see the smaller mech's module already greenlit. "Yes!" The little mech was adamant, his smaller hands scrabbling against Starscream's against his module, the larger set helping guide his own module against the jet's access port. The jet shivered at the touch of the small hands. He connected himself to Barricade. The smaller mech went rigid.

"Is it—is it supposed to hurt?" he said, meekly.

"No," the jet's brow furrowed. His datastream throbbed—he felt Barricade's race to catch up. It seemed he was enjoying it but…his face was a contortion of pain. "Little one, shall I?"

"No," the smaller mech said tightly. "It'll get better." He pulled the jet into a kiss, a violent one, his small teeth biting at the jet's labial plating, his glossa. The jet, driven by his previous lust and the feel of the smaller mech's datastream against him again, overloaded quickly. The small mech shrieked into his mouth. Not a pleasured sound. Not at all. Starscream jerked back, hard enough to jerk at his connector cables. The mech was out—but not faded out from overload. He had fainted. Starscream felt sick, fighting his own fadeout, using the pain from jerking against his cables to keep himself grounded. He swiftly disconnected them.

He was afraid to touch the smaller mech. He knelt over him. "Barricade? Little one?" he said, worriedly.

The smaller mech came back to a groan of pain. "It hurts," he gasped. "Why does it hurt?"

"It is not supposed to. Barricade, I did not know that it would or I would never have done it." His voice was thick with sincerity. He didn't want to hurt the smaller mech. Hadn't even really wanted to interface with him. The jet closed his eyes in guilt. He had only wanted to do it to make the mech feel a little better. Feel a little normal. And now this.

The mech's face collapsed into that childlike wail. "Can't even do this right, can I?" he said, somewhere between bitterness and self-pity. "Should probably die. Useless. Freak. Failure. Disgusting thing," he continued a litany of self-abuse.

"It is merely too much right now," Starscream lied. He would tell a bigger lie if he could think of one, if merely to stop the small mech's stream of loathing words. He scooped the mech up, and lay back against the wall, depositing Barricade on his chest. "Hush," he murmured, stroking the mech's shoulders. "There is time enough for that later, little one. There is always time for self-recrimination. But now, please…." Do not ask any more of me, Starscream begged. I have nothing more to give. I have no well of words that can make this better, small one. I have not even the small comfort I can give your body. I have only this. He draped his arm over the small mech protectively.

"Don't need your pity."

"It is not pity, Barricade. It is…something I do not know the name for." Some deep feeling of empathy, of understanding the pain of rejection, of recognizing the gap between oneself and what one thought one was, of failure. This he knew; if he did not know the word for it.

The smaller mech looked up at him, his four eyes struggling with the close range, before lowering its head against the jet's armor. "Yes," he said. He threw one of his arms over the jet's cockpit, and closed his eyes.


	6. Barricade: Control Epilogue

_A/N: oh yay, another epilogue. In case you skipped the pervy chapter (and I don't really blame you) this will wrap things up nicely for you. A reviewer wanted to see Frenzy develop out of this, which is a TOTALLY cool idea! I could see, in a sense, 'Meta' becoming Frenzy. But I always thought Frenzy was on-loan from Soundwave. Still, it's an awesome idea and I may just take you up on that! (Oh teh noes! An epilogue of an epilogue?!?!) _

**Epilogue**:

"This is on your authority, Air Commander."

"Yes."

"And on your head. If he shows any signs of instability…."

"He will not. If metacontrol did not break him, nothing will." Starscream looked behind him, where the ugly little thing crouched on the floor. The walk over here had exhausted the thing's legs—atrophied from merely dangling in the harness cycle after cycle. Something like a second-thought bubbled in Starscream's brain: the droneling cannot even manage to walk. How can he adapt to anything else? No. He deserved a chance.

"What did you have in mind for him?"

"Intelligence." He heard Tailwind suck in a breath to protest. "The bot is not stupid. Even you must admit that his tactical abilities are almost unmatched. It would be, if nothing else, a waste not to use him." Starscream felt the little ugly thing's freakish eyes on him. It had finally managed, after cycles of effort, to get all four eyes to point in the same direction.

"Too high priority. If he cracks, just once…." Bombshock let the sentence dangle into possibilities.

"He will not crack. When I pulled him, he was controlling more than sixty bots. That is not a weak or unstable mind." More than that, every kill these hijacked mechs had scored had been one-shots. Straight, drilled through the spark chamber. That was not an out-of-control processor. The survivors had pointed out how easily one could identify one of Meta's kills. Apparently, his trademark.

"Unit 26G643AB defied a direct order."

"His name is Barricade. He is not a mere unit. You will grant him that dignity." Starscream's voice was cold.

"He was murdering other bots!"

"He was acting within mission parameters. I heard him—you did not. His orders were if they were in the dome and not on his registry, they were the enemy. All of his actions were entirely consistent with that directive. He did not snap. He did not crack. He was following orders." That was what had overcome the jet's repulsion to the deformed little thing—in his way, Barricade was acting as a warrior. And from what Starscream had seen on playback, a damn good warrior. "If there is a problem here, it is in the directives he was given."

The CC supervisor pinched his mouth. He spoke for the first time. "All right. I will sign the orders releasing it—him—from CC. And Meta will die. But…it's up to you."

"No," Starscream said, looking over at Barricade again. The ugly thing met his eyes. It had fully expected termination. Told him that even trying this was a waste of time. Starscream had responded that a mech who expects to die wouldn't find any time or any chance a waste. And then he simply pulled rank and overrode the little mech's wishes, leaving the thing openmouthed. Apparently unused to any sort of challenge. He was no longer Meta. He would have to learn.

Starscream had been surprised how meek the bot had been—not even saying a word for itself, just squatting on the floor lost in its own thoughts. The two other combat leaders seemed surprised by the small mech's humble silence as well. Apparently it was not his usual behavior. Starscream hoped it spoke well for the little mech's maturity. Perhaps Meta was gone, and Barricade…was yet to be formed.

Its smaller arms twisted idly—the only sign of tension in the little frame—picking at the gouges it had made in itself during its thrashing seizure. Barricade's gaze was somewhere between gratitude and a glare.

"It is up to him what he makes of this."


	7. Megatron: Limit

_A/N: I really hate what I call 'cardboard Megatron syndrome'--where the villain is just...pointlessly evil. He'd go out of his way to kick a puppy. That's just not how psychology works. EVERYONE likes to think of themselves as basically good, reasonable and decent people: Hitler didn't think of himself as evil. The few who do truly view themselves as evil are so often linked with psychosis that they cannot possibly ever 'lead' anything--they simply wouldn't tolerate (nor vice versa) followers. So, I tried to figure out a Megatron who made 'sense' and saw himself as...well, not 'good' but 'right.' Morally and ethically justified. _

_It was supposed to be a standard story: the second section was first and it was supposed to be slashy third person. But it started coming to me in first person, and then more and more like a monologue. I went with it. For best effect, seriously, read it aloud. _

_We all know the story of the OP/Mikaela fic that was handed to Peter Cullen, right? In my dreams I fantasize about slipping this baby to Hugo Weaving. Oh it would so work in his voice. But then I'd die of shame on the spot. (Would it be worth it? Hrmmmm). _

**LIMIT**

In this world, you're either a victor or a victim. I am not a victim.

I will not tolerate victims under my command. I force them to submit to me, until they resist. Until they find they despise their victimhood and determine to fight back. Prove to me you're not a victim. Prove to me what you are.

Have I hurt you enough? Are you tired of being a victim yet? Are you so full of pain and so empty of pride that you can finally strike back?

*****

**Decide**

"Fight back," I whisper, forcing a kiss on the other bot. Who he is is unimportant to me. He has no name. He has no identity, as long as he is just a victim. The bot moans underneath me. "Which is more important," I purr, "Desire or your pride?" I trace a thumb along his anonymous module, just enough—I know, I have practiced—to hurt.

"Please," he gasps.

"Please? Warriors do not say 'please'."

The bot groans, torn. Stop. Don't stop. He can't even decide what he wants. His sensor net is screaming at him, making it hard to think. He cannot, probably, calculate how long he has been here. How long he has been a victim.

"Let me go," he says, weakly.

"You are free to go at any time," I step back, trailing one hand down the other's jaw. "If you leave, however, you must leave behind any hope of becoming a warrior. That is what is at stake." I do think it only fair to remind him. Pain is so…temporary. Regret, however, is so very, very long.

The bot gnashes his teeth. He goes so far as to sit up from the repair frame. I step back, sweeping my arm in an open gesture: 'be my guest'. The bot swings his legs off the frame, his eyes on his leader, me, his expression unreadable. I encourage him with a nod. "Go ahead." I watch as he kicks himself off the frame, one hand gingerly covering his interface hatch. It must, I figure, hurt him immensely. I have had him for cycles, using the stinger on his sensitive nodules, alternating him between agony and desire. Like he is a toy.

Until he is no longer a victim, a toy is the best he can hope to be.

The bot swings at me as soon as his feet hit the ground, catching me—almost—off guard. The blow rings squarely off my jaw. I step back, rubbing my face, smiling. "Finally." I say.

The bot snarls in frustration. "Is that what you wanted?"

"What I want is irrelevant. It is about what you need. As a warrior, you need to find your limit."

The bot swings at me again. This time I catch it, his fist, easily in one hand. I hold his fist hard, despite his struggling. "What about you?" he snarls. "What's your limit?"

"I found mine long ago." I smile, sadly. "But I have transcended it." I pull the bot closer by the trapped fist, until our chassis bang together. The bot struggles. "No," I admonish. "Do not pull away. Stay and fight. If you want to be a warrior." I look down at the smaller bot with something like tenderness.

*****

**I want**

Finally, it is my turn to do the hurting—my turn to be in control. I am not, I admit, in control of my emotions. I am not in control of…so much. So much responsibility—the safety of all of Cybertron depends on me at one point—now the safety of all of my Decepticons, the conduct of the war, a thousand, a hundred thousand unconsidered variables tear away at any sense of stability or control I might pretend to. Too much I'm not in control of.

But another bot—oh Primus can I work a bot's sensor net. THAT I can control. I can control pain and pleasure. And with those, through those, I can control the bot.

They don't understand that this is how I love them.

I want them to be strong. I want them to endure pain and pleasure with equanimity, realizing the transience of both. I want them to know the power they have inside themselves: of pleasure. Of pain. Of obedience. Of their will. Pride breaks down equally before pleasure and pain. All of these illusions of self—as warrior, as rational, as somehow above or beyond or not the body—gone. When you're stripped down to nothing but the reflexes of your sensor endings, when you are that naked, that open—that's when we know who you are. You can't hide. You can't hide from your own body. And you can't lie. You can't lie. Not to yourself. Not to me.

*****

**Experiment**

Oh, I suppose you want some story, don't you? Something rational and simple. Illustrative. That you can read and think upon and pretend that you understand me. Let you in. Let you pry. Give you power. Illusory control.

I will not give you control.

But to show you I am not afraid, this much:

A long time ago—beyond your entire species's lifespan—if you can imagine—can you imagine?—I was young. I have never actually catalogued the details, but I strongly suspect that not one of the parts I had back then do I still have now. Bit by bit, piece by piece, I have been replaced. Repaired. That's a lesson for you, human—I am nothing the same.

But, back then….

Ah. Who was I back then? I was…ambitious. Ambitious beyond my place, yes, but more: ambitious beyond my then-frame's abilities. I…broke myself. Repeatedly.

Allow me to state it plainly, human: I did not feel pain. I do not mean that I could stoically endure it. Or that I could override it, or ignore it. It simply did not register. There was something…different in my programming. I could not feel it at all. You realize, but are probably ungrateful for, pain's ability to signal your feeble body to stop. Touch a hot stove—snatch back before you cook your flesh. Step on a thorn or shard of glass—stop before you injure yourself further. Yes? You understand? Imagine, then, lacking that system.

Now, for the other side: pleasure. I do not need to tell you that the two are opposite faces of the same coin. He who cannot feel pain cannot, canNOT, feel pleasure. The two are interlinked. Press too hard on pleasure and it's pain. Lighten a scratch or a strike, it becomes a caress. It stands to reason then as well as reality that I cannot feel pleasure. Not the physical sort, I mean.

Oh, of course you want to know about interfacing. Vulgar little fleshling. Yes, I can overload. What it feels like? A release—nothing more. Like a steam valve, releasing pressure before the pipe explodes. Not…pleasure as it has been described to me. As I have seen it. I do not, for example, fade out. I am not overwhelmed. And what I need—what I NEED—to get to overload is not mere physical sensation, but emotional.

Yes, I do have emotions. Grant me that much decency.

I feel an entirely intellectualized—if you can imagine—variety of lust. Less a physical desire than a mental possession. I need, or want, someone else's reaction.

But I digress, which you may think to read as evasion. I do not evade. I became, because of my…unique condition, a scholar of what I lacked. A scientist. I wanted to know how it worked, this thing I lacked. Ideally how it felt. If nothing else, how I could install or co-opt its limits to my own programming so that I knew when to stop. When to stop, do you understand?

It began rather benignly—I merely wanted to gauge various levels of pain for the ability to create my own supplemental subroutines. They wouldn't give me the experience, but I would learn, I hoped, to stop before stasis lock.

How does this feel? Does this hurt more or less? It was science but one which quickly began to stir me at a primal level. Imagine if you will how bizarre it must have seemed to my subjects: I would hit someone, another bot, on some minor, often trumped-up offense or insult, and then ask, 'How did that feel? How much did that hurt? Did it hurt more or less than the last time I hit you?' They dreaded that last question most of all. Answering that, they showed me fear. Gave me my first taste of my power over another through the only thing that they had that I lacked. It was…seductive. As close as I imagine it is for you with this sense of pleasure. It seemed wrong to me that all I could do is hurt them. I wanted to increase my control. I wanted to see also the other side of what I did not have. I wanted to know. Not to replicate this time.

To…manipulate.

*****

**Quintesson**

Shortly after this, I was captured. It is not a highly public chapter in my life. After I was promoted to High Protector, the entire episode was expunged from public record. It would not do, (do you see?) to have the safety of Cybertron rest on one who had been a captive of the Quintessons. It would not soothe the public soul.

They are, the Quintessons, known for their cruelty. Theirs is not mine, however. They are cruel simply because they can be. Because it passes for an amusement to them. They have refined the art of pain, but know nothing of the art of pleasure. And from me, you can imagine, they learned nothing of that.

Oh, I suffered. Foremost and first, I suffered helplessness. Complete lack of control, from my freedom to even use of my hands, my body. Entirely at their whim, their caprice, their command. No amount of furious self-will could stir so much as one of my fingers against their control.

Eventually—ages long, it seemed, and yet brief, most likely by chronometer—they bored of this mental torment. And I became a numb ball of rage. They gave me—temporarily—what I lacked. They wired, essentially (the exact mechanism is tediously complex to describe and to be honest I choose not to think of it overmuch) me into another bot. As he felt, I felt. It was, in a vulgar consumerist sense, a bargain for them: two pains for the price of one.

It was entirely new to me. Human: Have you ever a memory of your first encounter with some new thing? Perhaps a city you have never visited. Your senses are…wide open. Raw. Enervated. You cannot even filter what is important detail and what is extraneous noise that even the locals ignore. I was the visitor in the foreign city, this other bot. And I discovered, slowly, agony. Truly, truly agony. I can find no other way to describe it. Pain in ever-growing increments, carefully doled out by my tormentors. I fascinated them.

Even this bored them, in time. One of the negative effects of being long-lived, intelligent, and, I imagine, entirely emotionless is that every experience turns to decadent tedium. Think of the refined yet evacuated cruelty of your French Decadent writers. Mirbeau? Huysmans? You know them? Yes. Like that, but even longer-lived. Imagine what horrors they could concoct over millenia?

So my penance took a new sheen. Yes, I considered it my penance—as if every ounce of pain I had doled out in my early experiments was handed back to me. With white glove service. And my first realization was this: if you do this, do it for a reason other than to alleviate tedium. The Quintessons' brutality was cold and emotionally void. And most offensive, for absolutely no reason. Even calling it a penance, I have ascribed it to a category so that I can make sense of it. They did not do it to punish me. They did not even care who I was. They did it because they could, nothing more. Compared to them even my earliest experiments were not-so-unconscionable, I suppose—I had an ultimate purpose, an aim in doing them that could not be reached through any other path. But my aim was ultimately selfish: it ended with utility to me. My first resolve was to change that. Pain was not to serve me. Even that was not good enough.

I have said, yes, that they got bored. Eventually. With my proxy-suffering. Think on this for a minute, though, human, what it does to the mind. Imagine: feeling the pain of a limb burnt off, entirely, reduced to slag and cinders. Every excruciating moment. When the real bearer of the real limb had slipped into a blessed unconsciousness, I, lacking the true system, could not escape even by that much. And then imagine looking at your own limb, and there it still is, intact. Whole. Pain and horror. What to trust—your eyes or your sensor net? One of them is lying to you. Imagine it.

Yes, they tired even of this refined torment. And yes, I delay relating the next horror. But, I may as well, having gone this far, tell you everything. Simply to show that I have no fear of my own words. Of my own history. It does not bind me.

The next step, of course, was to make me do the hurting. Ruthless, almost beautifully efficient, no? I had to fight this other bot. To the death. Feeling nothing when he hit me, but feeling every blow, every injury, that I gave him.

Obviously, I won.

*****

**Resolve**

What else did I learn from the Quintessons? Why did they let me go? To the second question: they do what they will and for their own inscrutable reasons. If they even possess reason, which I sometimes doubt. Maybe they felt that I no longer amused them. Maybe some better entertainment came along. Or maybe they felt as if they, and this thought only came to me centuries later, had honed me into a sufficiently dangerous weapon. Maybe, maybe that was their plan all along. All I know, and all that mattered at least at that moment, is that they let me go.

As to what I learned: First, as I have told you. I became adamant that from thenceforth, pain must serve some good reason. Not merely to while away hours of tedium. No longer even just to feed curiosity. I resolved to become as unlike my captors as I could.

Considering, that is, I am what they made of me.

Also, I resolved to use pleasure as well. I had had none during my captivity, you can imagine, not even of the ephemeral echo of pleasure that passes for mine. For every pain I inflicted, as best I could approximate, I decided, I would balance the scales with pleasure.

Because I knew—I KNEW—that I could not simply stop. I would no longer experiment—if nothing else, I had learned enough about pain in my captivity to last even a Cybertronian lifetime. But they had taken a habit, perhaps a…proclivity, and raised it to a palpable physical hunger. Unwired, I no longer felt pain. I should have been more relieved than I was. But if I went too long without…without acting on this hunger, my spark, my self, suffered an horrific psychic pain. I tested, believe me, these limits extensively. I did not want to become like them. I hated myself for every blow I struck, even when I balanced it with a caress.

Well, so, what was my purpose? I needed. Had a need to fill, an appetite, as powerful as that for food or sleep. But if I wanted to be different from the Quintessons, from my old self, taking the lessons I had learned through another's agony—a nameless sufferer to whom I owe so much—I needed a purpose.

And yes, it bothers me that I never knew his name.

*****

**Waver**

The bot struggles with himself: to leave or to go? To leave—to leave forever his chance of being a warrior. To leave forever the ability to know, to study, his own limits. To know himself as few others, who do not engage in this subtle craft called warfare, know themselves. To leave forever the small circle of my intimates, whom I have personally broken open. Personally aided them to, and over, their limits.

I can see him struggle, can see him try to weigh how far he has come and what that suffering paid up until now has been worth. He tries to guess how much further I would go. How much he can take. Which torments him more—the pain or the desire? The present or the future?

I love him already, even knowing how easily he could turn right now and walk out. For his sake, I freeze, not even blinking, lest he try to read some signal into that, some tipping point in his decision. I know, I know, how easily he could break my heart—because I CAN feel, that much. It does not stop me from loving him. Loving this moment of indecision. This is one of the truly beautiful, truly powerful moments of his life. In time, whatever answer he gives, he will come to know that—that this moment was a lesson. And he learned.

He slumps against the repair frame. "I," he breathes, "I can't take any more." I do not twitch. He has not asked me anything. I keep my opinion to myself. This is his decision to make. His step. He looks up at me, his eyes flickering with weariness. "I can't take any more." He wants some verification from me. I shrug, noncommittal. Just enough to signal I am listening. Then, he asks of himself, of me, of the air, "Can I?"

And I know I have him.

*****

**Sight**

You ask who is special to me. They all are. The ones who don't refuse, especially. You ask about Starscream? I will tell you. But first let me tell you this about all of my warriors. We are all of us, ALL of us, broken. I don't mean by me. We are all misfits. You know about Barricade and…his programming glitch. Let us call it that, shall we? My Decepticons are all misfits, glitches, outcastes. We are all broken, flawed, ruined. Despised. Abnormal. We share that as our bond. That is what, at one level, holds us together. We have all been, one way or the other, rejected by the 'good' and the 'pure' and the 'right'. I merely teach them to embrace it.

Starscream, ah, that bottomless well of humiliation. He fights himself more than me. He looks for it. Looks for it. He wants to punish himself. Oh, it is magnificent. He's a blade's edge of struggle when he is with me. Beautiful. Painful. He could fight me, really fight me. He is my equal in that. He never does. Never truly fights. There is a story I could tell you—no. Let us just say that he refuses pleasure. I have offered him, believe me. He refuses. He is not a victim, because he is aware, as I am, of the fact that he wants it. That he is trying to turn his body into a conduit for his soul's pain. That he uses the humiliation to feel that his self-loathing stems from outside himself. That he has something other to hate himself for than whatever is his secret cause. His secret shame.

And one day, one day I will take him there, over that edge, take him beyond those walls he always puts up, even from himself. Tear both of us through the lies to the truth. And then…oh, he will realize his power. I should be afraid of that day, but as long as I am there to see it….

You see, of course, what my resolutions have created. Starscream needs me. The others need me. Some to be their savior. Some to be their nightmare. I bring all of the lessons I have learned and use them to help, do you see? To help. Bring pleasure to those who have known so little of it: pain to those who wish to purge themselves.

Ah, Optimus. Yes. My one notable failure. I was…younger back then. Clumsy. And he is pure. I see him and I see everything I could have been, if only…. We all have that, don't we? That acute awareness that if only this had not happened, if only that had not—how differently it all might have turned out. With my programming…idiosyncrasy, you see, I had to step off the straight and white and pure path that Optimus has always trod. There is this poem you Americans have that ends 'two roads diverged in the wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.' You know this poem? All the difference, do you understand? Except this poet of yours does not specify whether it was a good difference or a bad one. It is not so easy to tell, is it? And yet I am the villain, for what has been done to me.

For what I have done to others, I do not deserve blame. Not any more. They all seek me out. They can all leave at any time. At a word. They all need. And I am the only one willing to fill that need. You want true courage, human? Put yourself to be hated and feared. Make yourself the enemy. Willingly. Open yourself up to that hatred and fear. From those you love.

I wanted…oh, so many things with Prime. I wanted to be him. And when I couldn't be him from sheer circumstance, I wanted to destroy him. Or if not that, possess him, own him, as if his glamour would rub off on me, as if I could get his purity, his rectitude, by proxy. As if I could get that life that had been, I felt, cheated from me by happenstance and ill luck.

His honor is not my honor, though that does not mean I do not have honor. And that…oh, that is what I cannot forgive Optimus for. I can see his honor. He cannot see mine. Perhaps you know what it is like, yourself? Perhaps you have had this happen—someone you admire, respect, love—it seems that he has a certain radiance you can almost see. And he looks at you and he sees…nothing. Or less than nothing. Unworthiness. Contemptible stuff. He does not see your own radiance. Not even a glimmer. He does not even count your recognition, your admiration, worth anything. It feels like a kind of narcissism, that kind of blindness—he can be seen, but cannot see. I want, so much, I wanted to break him free from that. One day that blindness, I fear, will destroy him.

That is a final resolve I made: I will always recognize, I will always respect, those who see something in me. They may love it or fear it, but they see it. And I see them. I see them as they are, good and bad, both together.

I see them better than they see themselves. And how can you see someone truly and not love them?

*****

**Decision**

The bot, cycles later, finally breaks for me. He has wet himself from the pain, passed out several times, always struggling valiantly to wakefulness as I whisper softly in his audio, "Wake up, little one. Come back. It is almost over. Just a little bit more." His effort is lovely. This, I think, should be art—the true power of an individual to overcome, even himself. To surpass the limits his mind and feebler senses placed on his body, of what he thought he could not bear. What do you do when you see yourself bearing more than you thought you could?

He chooses to cry.

He fought well, against me. Screamed and struck at me again and again, using every ounce of strength he had. He shattered his own fist against my shoulder, not even realizing what he had done until I directed his eye to it. To have so much hatred—to see it happen, to see it blocking your ability to feel pain. To feel the power of your own emotions…. It is like a miracle, only one without an external divinity. The godlike power of the spirit.

Since then, his fight has been internal. With himself. He rages against me, but no longer contests me. This is the larger fight—I am perhaps, possibly, but a temporary influence in his life. He shall have to live within himself, within that body, for the rest of his days.

I dismantle the rest of that arm, slowly, methodically, speaking softly to him the whole time. I pause when pain wracks his body in fierce spasms, as though a giant god were shaking a doll. I forgive him when he apologizes—the spasms are not his fault. They are reflex—the body's death throes of its illusion of control—warning signals with nothing behind them. I tell him how brave he is, how strong. How good. As I peel off the armor, then begin stripping the wires, bit by bit, making dozens of long shallow cuts in his fuel lines, dozens of short sharp stabs of pain that resolve into an arm-length burn as fuel seeps through these dozens, dozens of cuts. Finally, he looks at me, his eyes haggard, streaked with lens lubricant and spattered with coolant and energon, empty of hatred, empty of fear, empty even of pain. Just the sorrows of the universe, seeping from his eyes and a hint of that wild ecstasy. And he says what I want to hear. "I," he gasps, his voice weak and raw, "I understand."

The tools clatter to the floor. I gather him into my arms, murmuring his name, giving him his name like a rebirth.


	8. Ironhide: Azimuth

_A/N: This happens about 3 decacycles after the events of Saejon Three, referred to in Barricade: Control. Having been in the military class, having been there at the start of the Decepticons, Ironhide has a hard time adjusting to the Autobot ways. He knows how to fight and think like a Decepticon. It's his greatest strength and his greatest vulnerability. It is not easy to leave behind._

**Cyberton: Early Days of the War**

Ironhide realized, once again, he had outstripped the rest of the Autobot assault forces that were supposed to be with him. He sighed, slowing to a halt, ducking behind some cover. Again and again he had drilled into them the pace they should run, the importance of covering flanks, keeping interval, everything that a lifetime of military service had settled hardware-deep into his cortex. And still, when it mattered, even when they were trying to retake their own former base, when they not only knew the terrain but knew there were injured waiting for rescue, they failed him. Failed the objective. Frag.

He heard a soft moan from across the corridor. A door hung off its tracks, its surface pitted with impacts that had chipped the paint, the space beyond it flickering in intermittent light. Someone was there. A trap, possibly. Luring him in.

Huh. Best way to fox a Decepticon trap was to go in knowing it was a trap. Benefit of having been one was knowing how to think like one. Ironhide combat rolled across the hallway, pressing himself inadequately flat against the wall, risking a peek at the room to get an idea where, if it was a trap, his enemy might hide.

The room was cluttered with desks—a classroom or briefing room, that left way too many places for an enemy to hide. The moan again. It sounded genuine. Eh. He was an Autobot now, and Autobots went to the rescue.

Even if his own Autobot team had fallen behind.

He dropped low, duck-walking into the room, cannons primed at easily movable angles. He waited for a klik, the perfect target. Nothing. Slowly, he stood up, hearing the moan more clearly, coming from his right.

The mech was in bad shape. One arm and one leg more or less blasted away, the other arm crushed under what had once been a display case. The face had been torn up, almost as if by claws: Ironhide recognized the telltale signs of flechette rounds. A puddle of fluids darkened the plascrete under the mech.

Ironhide knelt by the wreckage of the mech, doing the combat evac assessments that had also been drilled into him from a lifetime of service. The calculations were precise—they had to be. They had had entire blocks of instruction for evaluating casualties, a dirty kind of battlefield triage made necessary by the perennial shortage of resources. Even before the war, even before the professional military had redesignated itself Decepticons, this formula existed. And had been, at the time, approved by the High Council. Mech injuries ended up in three categories: 1) worth retrieving, (1b)even at the cost of other casualties, 2) worth basic field repairs that would keep the mech ambulatory and fighting for the duration of the battle, and 3) non-evac, non-aid salvage.

This mech was squarely in the third category. So why did he hesitate? Some mechs were lost causes. Even with a medic right behind him (and who knew how far away the rest of his 'team' was, anyway?) this mech was a lost cause. And in their resource-starved condition, the Decepticon army could not afford the waste.

And neither should the Autobots.

This one had a cycle, perhaps two, before his spark finally guttered out entirely. His optics, only one fully online, flickered in counterpoint to the flickering ceiling lights. A shame, Ironhide supposed. The mech was young, one of the New Army Autobots, one not at all suited for war, not even possessing integrated weapons systems. Ironhide looked at his own forearms, where 'con mods had installed two large pulse cannons. He was never disarmed. He was always a warrior.

A shame these Autobots were so slow to self-arm, relying on external armaments (that could so easily be dropped): guns, swords, mortars, bazookas, and the like. As if they could separate themselves from the acts of violence done with them if they could lay the weapon down at the end of the battle. As if keeping the weapons separate meant that they weren't, really, killers. Still trying to hold onto the old class system. The old denigration of the warrior class. The old prejudices.

It would kill them someday, he thought, if they didn't smarten up. It had already—just about—killed this mech.

But, they had saved _his_ life. Rescued him, mute and injured, from the disaster that had been Saejon Three. Had repaired him, asked him his story, made no objection when he begged to join their cause. He was sick of the 'cons. Meta had ruined the cause for him. Killing his own mechs, with his own weapons. Weapons he couldn't lay down. No. The Autobots would never sanction something as vile as combat control.

Regret, the Decepticons said, was a peacetime luxury. He snapped open one of his storage compartments, tugging out his salvage kit. Sorting out with practiced hands the fluid capture pouches, the quick-use cables. A data flimsy with instructions fluttered to the ground, getting stuck in the puddle of fluids oozing from the dying mech. He didn't need the flimsy. He'd done this before. Countless times. He knew what to do.

Lubricant and hydraulics first—nonessential survival fluids, then coolant. Then energon. Then the jumper cables. He jabbed the pouches' catheters into the right lines, snap-stretching the hoses to get the vacuum to begin drawing fluid.

The mech groaned, rolling his head to face Ironhide. His eyes flickered dimly, one hand reaching up, helplessly, for Ironhide's hand. Ironhide pulled away, resisting contact, as though death were contagious.

"'M gonna be okay?" the mech croaked. Fraggin' thing though he was here to help. The flickering eyes focussed on Ironhide's too-new Autobot insignia with a starved kind of hope.

No illusions, no delusions. Another 'con mantra. Ironhide was disturbed by how deeply their slogans had eaten into his worldview. How deep did they go? Could he see nothing but through a lens of their grinding? "No," he said, flatly. "You're dying." Illusions caused false hope.

"Oh!?" The mech's pulse raced: the hydraulic fluid filling up a little bit faster. The sound was a cry of injury, as if Ironhide's flat assessment had somehow proved fatal. Ironhide shrugged. Didn't matter, he told himself. Dying anyway. He set up the coolant bag for next. "Give me something…hurt less?" Almost pleading.

"No." Your pain does not matter, he added, in his own processor. The cause matters. Autobot or Decepticon, pain did not matter. Suffering did not matter. Until victory.

The mech's eyes were unreadable, overflowing with lens lubricant, that caused microsparking in the damaged optic. "What?" he breathed, his voice thick with confusion and fear, "What are you doing?"

"Taking your fluids." That was about as much hydraulic as he was likely to get, he assessed. He snapped the pouch's cath out of the line, and surveyed for a good spot to plant the coolant pouch. "Energon next." No illusions. No sense, also, in only partial truths. He plunged the coolant bag's hard catheter into a solid looking line, right off the core.

The mech winced. "You—you're killing me."

"No," he said, impatiently. The damn Autobot wasn't getting it. Clinging to his stupid hope instead of reality. "You," he said firmly, "are dying. I am merely salvaging." He tucked the half-full hydraulic pouch away, pausing to check the filling of the lubricant.

The mech's eyes were still on him, like a wet weight. Waiting. Expecting. Making it feel like he was doing something wrong. He wasn't doing anything wrong. This was straight, settled protocol, settled before the war, High Council approved. Not even by their standards was this wrong. Why, then, did he feel so bad? He'd expect the same to be done to him, if the situation were reversed.

They had a slogan for that, too: that in his death, salvage would allow him still to serve the Decepticon cause. His effort spread through the cables and hoses and sparks of others, his true brothers, his true kin. It was the Decepticon way. Even combat control—we are all one. One mind, one effort, one fluid. One spark.

His hand drifted to the cables. Almost time. No illusions, he told himself, this time. It was the Decepticon way.

Except he wasn't a Decepticon anymore.

The mech's optics fought to clear, glittering with sudden recognition. "You're the 'con we saved."

"Yeah, that's right." He grunted. He'd always be 'the 'con,' wouldn't he?

"We saved you," the mech breathed. As if that made Ironhide owe him something. His vitals were starting to fail. Ironhide thumbed the alligator clips on the cables, eyeballing for a good clamp around the damaged spark chamber.

"And why did you save me?" Ironhide was sick of this: hearing over and over that they 'saved' him. Like they owned him. Like that meant he wasn't one of them. Not really. He was something less, because he'd been 'saved.' "You saved me," he said, his voice bitter, "why?" He attached the clips: one to the spark chamber, one grounded on an arm strut, hooking the other two quickly up under his chassis. "You saved me to kill for you."

He hit the connector switch on the cables, grunting as the remaining charge of the mech's spark flowed into his own, its energy swirling in a familiar, if uncomfortable, fight. The light faded from the mech's eyes with a certain familiarity, his ruined face gaping in something like horror and judgment. Even in death, judging Ironhide.

He pushed himself back, grabbing the pouches, jerking them roughly out of their connections. Frag the energon. Frag the Autobots' purity. Frag their system of obligations. They wanted him to kill for them? He would.

But for the first time, he a thread of yearning for the comfort of true teammates, true war brothers, who would understand, who would tell him he was right. A longing even for a combat controller, like a conscience, guiding him, ultimately responsible, ultimately responsive. Comforting, even while invasive. Hated, but longed for.

He looked around the room, hearing for the first time running feet. His own team, finally finding him.

Finding him.

He stepped out into the hallway, bracing himself to lead the ragtag bunch of amateurs. They joined him in a clotted bunch, clumped together despite how many lectures about interval and distance? They couldn't help it. They were afraid. They took comfort in each other, even if it made them easy and obvious targets. Their togetherness only showed him materially how alone he truly was.


	9. Vortex: Vetus part one: loyalty

_A/N a little something written for a challenge, prompt, loyalty. I so rock with the titles, no? I've gotten rather depressed lately with the realization that people want pairings and slash and...sometimes I can't deliver. This is one of those times. I envy the authors who can crank out amazingly fluffy pairings all over the place. They're immensely popular. Part of me wants to be popular. And I hate that I can't pull it off. Much less be popular. Sigh. _

_Enough with the whining. Vortex and Onslaught. _

Everything hurt. His frame was gouged, rotors bent and seeping, trickles of energon drying crustily along his armor. His vents wheezed through his air intakes, struggling to cool his systems overheated by the beating that Onslaught had been delivering for the last cycle. Even more than that, though, Vortex's ego hurt. Hurt all the more because he deserved this: deserved even worse than this—though he was, in his way, grateful he had gotten this much.

Onslaught understood him. Onslaught knew how he needed to externalize his pain. More: Onslaught was willing to do that for him—transfer his guilt and fear and inner darkness to his outer body, where it would seep and bleed and, finally, a bit at a time, heal. The marks on his frame, across his sensornet, pain which otherwise would fester underneath, come boiling up, boiling out, boiling over. As it had, which was how he had ended up here.

He hated the gratitude almost as much as he hated his need for this pain. He certainly, though, did not hate Onslaught.

He had done—all unknowing although that was no excuse—an unforgiveable wrong. Singlehandedly, he had taken down his own team. Destroyed Bruticus better than deliberate sabotage. Overstepped. Given in to his darkness, which he could clearly no longer be trusted to hold in check.

He wouldn't apologize: he couldn't. Not like words could make it any better. His pride wouldn't let him, even so. But Onslaught, he knew, could read the mute apology in the way he did not even struggle or fight against Onslaught's blows. The way he refused to even allow his optics to beg. He would take what Onslaught decided was his toll without even trying to get him to mitigate it. Give me all that I am worth. Good and bad. May I be worth punishing. Redeeming.

Onslaught stepped back, as if sensing surrender. "Enough," he said, quietly. He flattened his hands, as if so many punches had tightened the servos.

Vortex couldn't even find words. What now? Pathetic, he thought, looking down his dented and energon-spattered forearms. He felt his muteness acutely, like a failing. A gaping wound. He felt he should apologize. Say something, offer SOMETHING back. Submit to Onslaught's authority in some more...verbal, less visceral way.

He owed Onslaught. For more than this. For more than understanding him. And he had—obviously, so obviously now that it pained him worse than any of the injuries Onslaught had given him—let him down. It had been building for a while, the thing with Swindle, becoming a palpable pressure, grinding away at Vortex's temper, which had finally snapped, as if metal fatigued. The fraggin' mech had been diluting their energon, selling the surplus. Unspeakable betrayal, Vortex had thought—shortchanging his own team. Weakening them, and for personal profit.

Right. He called that betrayal. As if he had the ability, much less the right, to judge. Compared to what he had done: destroying his own team? He'd thought—foolish miscalculation—that he'd handle it, not bother Onslaught with it. Presumption. Overstepping his bounds. It didn't matter that it was motivated from a desire to take care of things, to spare Onslaught some effort. To…help. Pathetic. You can't even help yourself.

He wasn't sorry for what he had done, not at that level—it had been pure. Cathartic. His systems running cleanly, unclogged from the darkness, the sludge in his processor. It had turned, for a brief moment (it seemed) his viciousness into righteousness.

He had been fooled. No. He had fooled himself.

He had destroyed his team. He had been…unable to focus on the consequences of his actions. He could act, but he could not see. That, he had failed. That, he was sorry for. But he could not put that into words. He wished that, in a way, Onslaught would continue, beat him more, take him, push him on a surge of pain past his inarticulacy, until the words would come. As much as part of him loathed the idea, another part would have spilled in relief to be sobbing on the floor, groveling, exploding, melting down, able to explain. Able to believe he deserved forgiveness.

That was why, in the end, he could not apologize.

He pulled himself onto his knees, stiffly. Words would not come. And Onslaught knew better than to expect them. Only Vortex wanted to speak. Only Vortex wanted to…try to fix things. Because yes, his last attempt had worked so fraggin' well. Shut up and learn your lesson, he told himself, harshly.

"Let's go," Onslaught said, hauling Vortex up by one arm. His hand was gentler than Vortex wanted, but even this, possibly, was punishment—not to hurt you as much as you feel you deserve.

He trusted Onslaught's judgment implicitly—as he should have trusted him to handle Swindle's cheat. Wordless—everything he wanted to say somehow clogged, glommed together in his vocalizer.

"Go…where?" he managed, after a long struggle. Onslaught was watching him, neutrally, measuring his pain.

"Have to report to Megatron," Onslaught said. "He'll see you've been disciplined."

"Don't have to…." He couldn't find the right ending for that sentence. He should probably have been in terror of Megatron, but…he wasn't. All Megatron could do was kill him, yes, without a thought or barely an effort. Could order his death with a quick, instantly-forgotten, callousness. And that's all it would be, and all Vortex would be to him.

Which was why Vortex didn't care: Megatron's decision of his life or death, punishment or reward, was impersonal, immaterial as the hand of Fate itself. Life or death were not, had never been, his choice to make—he was a fighter. Death could snatch him at any time. Death was…irrelevant.

Onslaught was not. And the difference was—he didn't care what Megatron thought of him: he did care about Onslaught's opinion.

It wasn't because Onslaught was closer, saw him every day. It was because of…things like this: the Combaticon leader's strange consideration. He pulled together both Vortex's need for self blame/self pain, with the appearance of punishment. A careful, precarious, but skilled balance between what Vortex needed and what was required to satisfy the outsiders. And that…and that Onslaught would keep this here. No further. The others might remark his injuries, but Onslaught would leave them to make their own inferences.

"Not your problem," Onslaught said. He tugged Vortex more roughly. The copter winced as the action shifted his weight onto an injured ankle, blessed pain. Pulling him out of his mind, into his frame. Into the moment, not the past or the future but the NOW. The copter limped after Onslaught to the grav lift.

Vortex questioned sometimes why Onslaught followed Megatron. Loyalty programming could do so much, but…demagoguery could undo just as much and just as fast. Onslaught was too smart to fall for Megatron's slick rhetoric. It had to be something more. Something deeper. Something Vortex was too blind or limited to see.

But with his own judgment—Vortex dare not question Onslaught's choices. Look no further than your loyalty forces you. Trust those you place above you. Trust in what they decide. Loyalty is personal: faith impersonal. Loyalty to a cause is dangerous; loyalty to an ideal, fatuous. But loyalty to another matters—one you can see and study and know—not from a distance but up close. See that they're measuring up, that they're not becoming a veneer of themselves, an idol/ideal, selling their own best selves into the slavery of ideologies.

Onslaught deserves that loyalty. Because he gives it. He will go in there and confront Megatron and will take the censure as though it were his own. He will not stand by while anyone insults us—no matter how deserving we are. He fights for us even when we don't deserve it—as I don't, not right now. He takes hits for us, for our failings, without a word of complaint. He takes punishments meant for us. Without lashing out at us, taking his rightful pound of flesh. He simply goes…quiet for a while.

And that's when I will protect him. Vortex's hands balled into bruised fists.

Vortex followed Onslaught down the dark, tall corridor—deliberately intimidating architecture, the ceiling lost in shadows to remind entrants of their smallness. "I'll make it up to you," Vortex offered. It was the closest he could come to an apology.

"No need," Onslaught said, his visor stonily facing the approaching door.

Yes, yes there is, Vortex thought to himself. _I _need.


	10. Vortex: Vetus part two: despair

Hopefully you're piecing the story together now. Sorry it's taking me so long to update! :C

This installment brought to you by a prompt ultharkitty gave me (go read her combaticons stuff: she's awesome!)

Onslaught hated these rare occasions when he found himself actually having to feel something. It eroded his edge, clogged his processor with difficult code. Anger he could use: rage, white hot, fueled him, focused him, kept him moving. This, though, seemed to bog him down, gum his gears.

And he hated that so many of these rare and agonizing moments had the name Vortex at the bottom of them.

"This time," he said, quietly, so that he could possibly trust his voice not to crackle, "you have gone too far."

He waited for Vortex to protest. Waited to hear the copter's excuses, shifts of responsibility, claims that it was someone else's fault. He steeled himself for the hard contempt he'd have to throw up as a wall between them.

"I know," Vortex said, simply. The visor tilted down, studying his hands. Hands still blackened with charred energon. What could he say more? He had. He had done the unthinkable.

Onslaught faltered, unsettled more by Vortex's simple reply than the barrage of excuses he'd been expecting.

"I…lost it." Vortex ached, less from the physical overstrain of his damaged servos than from his own horror. This was why he'd needed Onslaught. All these megacycles, without someone to act as his rein, his safety release. Without him, he'd gone too far. Overstepped enough when Onslaught HAD been there to keep him in check. And he'd just proved that for all that, he had learned...nothing. Shame bit at him with sharp fangs.

"That's it? No excuse? You 'lost it'?" Onslaught felt an almost welcome ripple of anger. Yes. Yes, come. Please. Fill me. Let me feel what I know how to feel. Push aside all this…other. I can resolve anger. I can let it pass through my system. This, though, I cannot handle.

"Blast Off," Vortex breathed. He cut himself off with a brisk shake of the head. As if he dared not even allow himself to think any further. Blast Off, bursting suddenly into orange-red fragments as he approached the landing pad, a sudden jarring wrench over the gestalt bond, a howl that Vortex still could not tell if was his or Blast Off's. And then Swindle. Fraggin' Swindle muttering something about lost profit and volatile chemicals.

And then the piece of charred purple armor had clanged on the launch pad deck between them, and it had been like a signal flare. Vortex had moved without thinking. Purely on instinct, purely on feeling.

Oh, Vortex had put it together right. Swindle had sold them out collectively—it was no surprise he'd sold Blast Off out the same way, tricking him into moving some illegal goods. Just as it was really—in retrospect (and Vortex was furious with himself that he hadn't seen it beforehand, in time)—no surprise he'd needlessly involved Vortex. Dangling fanciful notions of the gestalt reuniting, despite the Crisis Intervention Accords. Vortex had missed it all…so much. So much that he'd been ripe fruit for Swindle to pluck and then slice up into a fraggin' fruit salad.

There was no way Onslaught's rage could match the fury he felt against himself. But even that, he realized, didn't help Blast Off.

Nor did it bring Swindle back.

"Yes," Onslaught said. "Blast Off is in hard CR."

Vortex jolted. The news that should have comforted him—Blast Off wasn't terminated—instead filled him with an acidic burning horror.

Onslaught watched, trying to keep impassive as the news struck Vortex, the implications seeping in, like water, crackling frayed circuits in a series of agonizing little shocks. Yes. You'd killed Swindle. What you'd thought was revenge—life for a life—was imbalance. And worse. He had to say it. It was burning in his vocalizer, searing at his spark. Still, even so, he tried to find ways to soften the blow, to mitigate the damage. Vortex knew, but he needed to hear it. "This," he said, carefully, as if the words themselves were larger than galaxies and had to force themselves out against gravity, "ends the gestalt. We can never be complete."

Onslaught clutched desperately after rage. Trying to get furious, trying to summon the hot comfort of anger. In his rages, he could see everything so clearly. In his furies, he was safe, insulated from feeling anything. No pain, no distress, everything burned away but his next target, his next objective.

His rage eluded him, flames slipping through his fingers.

Vortex's rotors sagged as though they were suddenly immensely heavy. "My fault," he said. His processor raced, desperate to try and find some way to…fix it. Some way that he could stop the words that he knew were coming next.

Too late, and he knew it. He'd braced himself for Onslaught's searing rage. He was unprepared for the brittle cold in the gestalt commander's voice. "We will never be together again. And it is your doing. I hope you remember that."

Words and hope died tangled together. And they looked at each other for a long, agonized moment, feeling, for the last time, the same emotion.


End file.
